Change
by Galan
Summary: In the aftermath of the Anschluss, the von Trapps flee Austria to avoid the Captain's being drafted, hoping to eventually make their way to America. But there is no time to visit the abbey to even say goodbye to Fräulein Maria. [Repost from fall 2006]
1. Chapter 1

This piece assumes that the _Anschluss_ took place in its proper historical time, that Georg and the Baroness never became engaged, and that Maria returned to the abbey when she was scheduled to do so, rather than because of a burst of anger. (Tiny-AU, fer sure.) Alas, I do not own _The Sound of Music_ or anything else referenced in this piece. I tried to make it as accurate as possible in regards to historical figures. Also inspired by "Change", by Tracy Chapman. (Severely edited to bring out the inspiration, but you should totally binge listen to it: Tracy Chapman is an amazing artist and it's an amazing song!)

"If you knew that love can break your heart, when you're down so low you cannot fall...  
If you knew that you would be alone, knowing right, being wrong...  
If you knew that you would find a truth that brings a pain that can't be soothed, would you change?  
Are you so upright you can't be bent, if it comes to blows?  
Are you so sure you won't be crawling, if not for the good why risk falling...  
If everything you think you know makes your life unbearable...  
If you'd broken every rule and vow, and hard times come to bring you down...  
If you knew that you would die today, if you saw the face of God and love, would you change?"

* * *

**Change**

**Chapter 1 **

He was trembling with anger already, the rage surging with the last word on that page, the name signed to the telegram, Kapitänleutnant Karl Slevogt. _Bastards. _Nothing had been left for his enemies to steal, but Georg knew himself wrong, now. His honor he had not considered, and now they demanded it as well. He would not offer it to them freely, no matter how they demanded it! Had Franz said something? If he had, Georg had not understood it, the sound deafened by blood pounding in his ears and the crushing of paper.

There was nothing else for it. Nothing. With the news of the _Anschluss_, it had taken Georg only a few moments to decide on his course of action. Resist the Nazis, in whatever form he might. Refuse to listen to the reports soon to come on the radio, ignore the reports in the newspaper, purposefully neglect any of the public events, disbelieve any of their bloody propaganda. Perhaps even dispense with the feigning of conflicts, or forgetfulness, and openly declare his hatred for the Nazis!

But with the arrival of this telegram...His own choice had been made for him. _'You will be expected to report for duty as soon as possible, with the approval of the Gauleiter for any delays.'_ A day for travel at the most that sentence meant, and delays sanctioned only by Herr Zeller. Christ, he despised that man! Something about his small watery eyes made him a rat rather than a man. And he had allowed that bastard into this place, into his own home!

Glancing up to the railing that lined the upper floor of his home, Georg blinked. His own eyes were wet now: there the Austrian flag had hung, a proud display of his loyalty, what Herr Zeller could never have felt a bit of in his entire life. Turning from it, Georg walked into his study. But even there, he was not free from the reminders of the past: the ship was everywhere in one form or another, and with the faded and folded pictures of the men he had commanded, an Austrian flag, just as aged and worn. He turned away from it, continuing toward his desk; just glimpsing that flag was more than he could do now,

The midday sun was just beginning to dip from the highest point of its daily arch, and the shadows in this room were stretching from their noon invisibility. At his desk, Georg tapped his fingers along the surface; else, he would pour himself a glass of port, perhaps brandy, whatever there was nearest, and he had to have a clear head now. He had known it might come to this, but so soon he had not anticipated. Everything he had considered he needed to implement quicker than he had first believed.

From the announcement that Hitler had dispatched an ultimatum to Schuschnigg, expressing his rejection of the vote that had not yet taken place, Georg had been on edge. It was any man's guess whether the population as a whole would remember that Austria laid claim to a vast and great history, far more than the little more than half a century of German unity. One needed only to recall the Weimar Republic to name the German state weak.

But Schuschnigg had caved, and on the twelfth of March, the Wehrmacht had entered Austria—had _invaded_ it! Hitler had appointed another governor and called for a vote on the union, but how did that matter? Ballots handed to officials, posters on display instructing one to vote for the _Anschluss_...Where in this process was the voice of Austria? Those voting yes were volunteering as German puppets. What _did_ they see in the Nazis? That, Georg had never comprehended.

Perhaps he would have endured losing his country, being German rather than Austrian on his papers though never in his heart, but the this telegram was the final straw. He would not serve in the _Kriegsmarine_! His face was cold with the knowledge of what the decision meant for his family, and an anger was raging in him, but not at the choice he had just come to. He wanted nothing more than for his children to be raised in Austria, to become Austrian citizens proud of their heritage! But the damned Nazis denied his family what should have been theirs!

The telegram was crumpled in his fist, a fist he did not remember crushing around the paper. Franz's face had been blank when he had brought it from the front door, interrupting a few moments he had been spending with Marta, wondering just how far the mountains of Austria stretched and in what directions. The answer was simple enough to find in an atlas, but her imagination had created a range that went on forever, and it pleased him too greatly to destroy it with a fact or two. Another day and time he might have opened it right beside her, allowed her to ask what it was on the paper, but not in these days. Any telegram or letter, any voice over the telephone might announce the outbreak of veiled hostility and the certain disruption of his family.

And that was but one additional reason to despise everything the Nazis desired, as though their suppression of Christians, Jews, and any other with their own voices in Germany proper. He had just discovered his children again and had spent less than a year with them—truly being their father—in the beauty of Austria, and now they would lose him again, if he did nothing. But he could not stay and let them see him be devoured by the evil of Nazism. He had been theirs for a matter of months, and now he would leave them again, whether as he had before, just in his affect and thoughts, or bodily, to keep them from the coming conflict. Whichever, there would be no Maria to mend those aching pieces of their family.

He had not thought of her for some weeks, or at least he had not let his mind linger on her; no day went by that he ignored her memory entirely. She was never far from his thoughts, always ready to rise when he closed his eyes no matter what he considered. Wherever he went, she went along, either some quip of hers, one of her ridiculous songs—that one that she and the children had sung in that puppet show, _The Lonely Goatherd—_or simply the joy that could not be divorced from her.

Oh, God, it must be easier to forget her, but he had let her come into his thoughts and she stayed as well as if she stood before him and spoke the words that her presence in his mind whispered. When they danced the Ländler, when his hand took hers, for that moment they felt as one, his soul pouring into her just as hers flooded into him. His skin had only touched hers, their fingers curling around one another's, but something deeper between them had come together. Something for which there were no words. He could not endure forgetting her, for the joy she had brought to him, what she had done for his family, _whom_ she had transformed into.

Could he? Would he allow himself to perform this task, knowing what he did of what had passed between them in those moments?

"No," he whispered with a shake of his head. "You are just imagining something that isn't there." There was nothing she could possibly want from him. Such a young girl—her life ahead of her to do whatever she wished, and she had already dedicated it to the church to be a nun. She had served her purpose in his family, an angel that God had dispatched for a short time to his home to show him what was only a foot before his nose and hidden by his own blindness.

But...how? When she had gone, leaving their home after tearful farewells from the younger girls, hugs from Liesl and Louisa, and kisses on her cheeks from his sons, both of whom had droplets shining in their own eyes, something of himself had vanished, disappearing with her voice. In those moments, he had felt _abandoned_.

"Captain?" Franz's voice was entirely unexpected, and Georg jerked at the sound. God, he had left the hall to escape from the possibility of another voice, and now here his butler was again! Damn the man, just let him alone!

"Yes?" His voice was calmer than he had thought possible. In truth, he had never dismissed Franz, and the servant performed his tasks with the utmost care. Awaiting dismissal was one of those dull certainties of holding the butler's position, even if it meant following to ask for that freedom.

"Do you require anything else of me?" Georg turned to his butler, a man who had served in his home for nearly twenty years, always with a calm visage and smooth voice, never moved to visible excitement. He had never thought to look twice at the man, but now...His face was _too_ flat, not a spark of emotion anywhere in the lines of his age.

"No." Had Franz hoped that he meant to send a response? No matter, Georg decided, loosening his grip around the crumpled telegram. He would not stay here any longer, not when even his household servants were suspect. Not a matter of would—he _could_ not continue to make his home here. Austria had been only a ruined memory for some time, but he had not been ordered to dismantle what remained of his homeland's dignity. Not until now.

"Very well, sir." Franz still had the poise that had lifted from among other men when he had needed to find such a servant. A character utterly incompatible with a more flippant personality, such as Maria's—

"Don't think on her." He trained his ears on Franz's steps, loud on the marble tile of the hall. _Listen for one step after another, and don't think of anything else._ How long would they have to get away? The worry that rose suddenly in his gut pushed aside even Maria.

Just a few hours to make the preparations, and then they would be off. But where? He pressed a hand to his face, a warm palm against a cool cheek. Not to the north, certainly—Germany was precisely what he intended to flee from! South? No, even Switzerland would only be a matter of time with Mussolini in power in Italy. Pressed between Nazi Germany—he had to begin to think of Austria as such; it would make the departure less painful—and Fascist Italy, Switzerland occupied a desperate and unfortunate geography, even with its history of neutrality. Perhaps they were safe to pass through Switzerland, but not to remain there.

But then, where else could they go? No nation in Europe was safe...

"Then Europe is not safe," he said to himself. It was that simple. Where else was...America? Perhaps at one point, but could they make it there yet? Better to remember that they simply needed to be gone from Austria. What followed after that could be decided then. Georg opened his other hand and the crumbled paper of the telegram dropped to his desk. This was what had to happen, and it was no use thinking of what might have been. To go that far, though, they truly would leave her behind _forever_.

God, why not one more day? Time enough to truly prepare, to take the children through Salzburg a final time, to see their beloved Fräulein Maria again—just as much as he needed to see her himself. If they might leave tomorrow...but they needed even that short time, enough to allow for space to grow between themselves and the Nazis.

Some months earlier, if this had come upon them, he would have begged Maria to come with them, plied her with whatever she asked. Anything to keep her with them, but she was locked away in the convent, a prisoner to the vows she had taken.

"Not that," he said, turning away from the light. "It is her choice to be there." _As it is yours to oppose these invaders_. The both of them had decisions on their hearts they might come to regret. But hers was not his to make.

What was he doing? He slapped the sides of his face lightly; he was wasting time that he would come to regret! With just himself, he had a nearly impossible task—readying seven children to suddenly leave their home forever! This was not the time for—

And not that word! Georg measured his breathing, just thinking of each rush of air passing through his nostrils, the same air he pressed out between his lips. _Do not put it on her_, he thought. _Don't fool yourself into thinking of anything closer._

He had to do what he had to _now_, not want what was not his. Taking a step, first unsteady but then sure and strong, Georg reentered the hall. For the moment, he needed to find Liesl. Without her, all was undoubtedly lost. Friedrich as well. With his two eldest children, the task was manageable.

Miserable, Georg glanced around the hall, his eyes scraping the railing again, following the banister of the stairs to the landing that led to the outside steps, and up again along its mirror image. A year before, he knew his certain reaction to what was among his happiest memories: his children, singing. _There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall, and the bells in the steeple too. And up in the nursery an absurd little bird...__It would have been anger, but not now. Never now. _Lord, which did he treasure best, their voices in his ears or her eyes gazing into his? She haunted this place. Maria—_their_ Maria. God, she had become theirs for a matter of months, and now they would be separated by distances his children could not fathom, an ocean he loved. It would be a bitter love, now.

But they could not stay. With what was obviously coming, a war between Germany and any that Hitler designated an enemy of the _Reich_, he would not have allowed his children to remain for much longer in any case. Himself, he belonged to Austria, to what was left of her, and he would have waited out the war, hoping and praying for that day that he could dispatch the telegram to wherever he had sent them, announcing their return. Now, though, to remain was to serve as demanded or find himself forced to do so. Refuse, and he had a bullet already in his skull.

He didn't know, didn't even know how to begin to decide. _Don't think_, he told himself, taking the first of the steps onto the landing, the echoes of _cuckoos_ haunting his path and the feel of a ghostly hand quivering in his again, more than imagined. It seemed as real as it had that night, the night he had known nothing was possible between himself and Elsa... _No, _he had to tell himself again, climbing the steps to the children's rooms. _Just find Liesl._

* * *

**A/N:** Reposting this from fall 2006, just taking some time to clean up a few spelling and grammar issues. Once you notice them, they can't be unseen. Plus a lil' bit of editing...like editing out a lot of _thats_. (Our relationship isn't nearly as close as it used to be.) I think this might be my favorite _The Sound of Music_ story I ever wrote.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

It was fortunate that the ticket salesman had not given any thought to why a man and seven children were standing before his booth so late in the evening, Georg decided. Perhaps he was as tired as Georg knew he and his children felt (or perhaps he simply didn't care). Gretl was over his shoulders, clutching her arms around his neck while she sucked on a sweet. His back ached from caring her, but he still toted her along; the child was too young to make such a journey on foot. Before they had departed, he had filled both his pockets with small candies, for Marta and Gretl, in case either needed to be quiet. Friedrich had carried Marta for a time, but she walked now, clutching her oldest brother's hand.

_The journey to the train station had been easy, though not without its tense moments. He had decided upon waiting until the entire staff of their home had taken to their beds—the look on his butler's face at that telegram's delivery had turned Georg's stomach as well as it had piqued his distrust. Liesl had dressed the younger girls quietly while the most of the others assembled downstairs, taking each step of the staircase in silence, descending one step at a time to avoid even the gentle creaks that might give something away. In the end, Liesl and Friedrich had carried Marta and Gretl down, uncertain of the girls' ability to take those steps so cautiously._

_In thinking over the various legs of their escape, Georg had immediately discarded the thought of using any of the cars, or even the main roads. They had left through the back way, crossing the terrace in pairs, Friedrich still carrying Marta and himself with Gretl over his back. A short journey alongside the lake had taken them to one of the small paths that local farmers created year after year, the hooves of their horses and cows trampling the sweet smelling grass. Even as they wound away from the possibility of discovery at the hands of their household—indeed at the hands of anyone—no one had spoken, and Georg was grateful. As well as the silence had been welcomed, it had pounded on his ears as strongly as his heart, inviting even the smallest sound of an owl to be examined._

_He had only wished his last views of Austria were not so scant and swift, illuminated only by the moon and stars. Austria was not like the city still bathed in the lights of its nightly revelries, but the land that rolled where the earth had surged into hills beneath the mountains, the lakes and rivers that roared with the anger that only water mustered, and the voices and songs of her people. At the last, Georg was just as grateful for his children's silence as before, but almost more thankful for it because of what the silence must have replaced._

_Questions, hopes, perhaps even pleadings...all surrounding _her_. But, why even bother with their questions, if they did not ask them? What they would want, it simply could not be. Maria meant to be a nun, not what they wished her to be—a mother. And maybe she was meant to be that; her instincts seemed to have been designed for that task, not for living in a nunnery, shunning every task of love aside from love of God, the church, and for the humanity of every person she met. Never the love of a mother._

_Or the love of a wife. He had shaken himself at that thought, shifting Gretl on his back to distract himself. He had never before allowed himself to think of that, not even that afternoon when the pain of leaving Austria and her had cut him so deeply, and even knowing the impossibility, his mind had created a thousand different possible futures in the moment that thought passed through his mind, each brighter and more beautiful than the one before. But as the walls of Salzburg itself had loomed in front of them, Georg had distracted himself, the nerves rising in his stomach again, wondering if the Nazis would fill the streets asking for papers. Perhaps they had, but at this, one of the smaller gates of the city, no soldiers lurked, and for a time, he had breathed easier. Not until their train was safely beyond what had been the Austrian border would he feel entirely safe._

_Along what remained of the road—the train station was situated near the edge of the town to tarry near the population for as little time as possible—he had just listened for some noise other than the scuffling of feet and the scratch of pebbles on stone. When Gretl had begun to cough, he had dipped a hand into one of his pockets to find a sweet for her to suck on, something to fill her mouth, to keep her quiet. But no one of interest to them had been in the streets, just a tipsy man here and there, content to feel his way along the wall, and the last streets to the train station had been only filled with taxi drivers hoping for a midnight fare and the last of the city buses._

_In the end, Georg decided that the worst moment of their journey that__evening had been the time spent before the ticket booth, the man's eyes raking over the number of children standing before him. But even then, the salesman had sold the tickets without question, and Georg had breathed easier._

Their train would be departing in a half an hour, enough time to find their platform without worry over missing the departure time, but not so much time to garner attention. The walk along the platform before the various tracks was silent, broken only by footsteps or quiet coughs. Only a few people milled around them, disembarking for one reason or another in Salzburg, and even fewer seeking to board a train to depart.

In the moments when Georg had first made his decision, just after confiding in his two eldest children, he had dispatched a phone call to a close friend in Salzburg, Gunter Hanl. Though he was unwilling to speak of what concerned him over the phone, Gunter had been willing to allow him a visit. In just a few words explaining the situation, Gunter had agreed entirely in the plan that Georg had constructed.

The Nazis had power, but they were not always wise. Good God, the powers that be had established Herr Zeller as the _Gauleiter_! And so, with Gunter's permission, Georg had taken his friend's passport, and carefully pasted his own face over the picture of Gunter's. Perhaps they would be looking for his name, but he doubted they knew his face. It would be simple enough for Gunter to procure another passport. The false one he had constructed from his friend's Georg carried as his, and his legitimate one he had asked Brigitta to hide. She was young enough that he doubted she would be subject to any possible search; though of nearly the same age, he did not believe that if they encountered such searches either of his sons would be spared.

He had inquired if Gunter might join them, but he declined. Gunter's home was Austria, even that ruined memory, and he could not bear to leave it. Perhaps Georg might have thought the same way two days ago, but not after that telegram. So many good men and women had been swallowed by the abomination of the Nazis, and so many had elected to stay. He could not be among that number, even to say again and again to those _Austrians_ that the land they now called their home was only a facsimile of the land they loved. A ghost.

But for the moment, his children were his only concern, and they needed simply to find their train. What track was it? He could not remember it; God, he had been biting his tongue to hold back the bile in his stomach. How was he to remember anything beyond his name—and dear God, let him not remember his own but the one he was to claim for this journey!

"Liesl," he said, and his eldest daughter turned her face to him.

"Yes, Father?" she asked, quickening her pace to match his steps.

"What is the platform number again?" All the children were dressed in clothes that might be mistaken for the attire of the lower classes, and Liesl had a dark jacket over an equally dark dress, though the colors were different. Both sides of the jacket had deep pockets, and she dug her hand into the right side pocket. One of the tickets came out in her fingers.

"Platform five," she said. Looking up for a moment, she said, "It's not too far; we've just passed the twelfth." Her voice was quiet but sure, almost stronger than he felt himself to be, but even in that, there was a quivering he did not expect. Turning the ticket over in her hand, she dropped her face. Something troubled her, Georg sensed, and she slowed her pace again, falling behind him.

Turning around, Georg searched among his children. Brigitta and Kurt walked next to one another, quiet and an unlikely pair, perhaps drawn together by their ages. Brigitta was half past her tenth birthday, and Kurt was nearly twelve. Despite that fourteen or fifteen month gap, their ages still allowed the same fears. Louisa walked with Friedrich and Marta, her face cross underneath the hat that sat forward on her head.

Lifting one arm to support his youngest child entirely, Georg unclasped Gretl's hands from around his neck and unwound them with the other. His neck was warm from her small hands and arms, and her head still lolled against his back, as if she had fallen asleep; she probably had, he mused. He swung her around, cradling her in his arms for a moment and shaking her gently. "Gretl," he whispered, and the girl's head turned. Lord, his even his youngest daughter was almost too old for him to hold this way, as one might hold a very small child.

She opened her eyes, smiling a bit, as though she had forgotten the evening. She had already finished on the sweet he had given her, but now he did not worry so much over her coughs. In the brightly lit station, they could not hide; in any case, they were near enough to the end that he was not concerned with much noise.

"It's late, Father," she said quietly. "I should be in bed."

"Yes," Georg said, taking both of her small hands in one of his as he bent down to set her on the ground and steadied her on her feet. "We all should."

"Even you, Father?" Her small eyes widened, and Georg reached out to pinch her nose gently.

"Even me. Fathers need to sleep just as well." He straightened her hat, tousling the brown curls beneath its brim. "But I need you to walk for a bit." Her lips turned down in a pout, and he cupped her chin for a moment, smiling. Her lips trembled in an exaggerated manner for a moment, but she could not feign sadness for long with him so close. "With Louisa." He turned to his second daughter, and pointed at her. The older girl appeared confused for a moment, but then nodded. "I'll carry you in a bit if you want."

The child yawned, but after a moment ran to her older sister. Louisa held out a hand to the little girl, and Georg smiled despite himself. Every single one of his children had grown by leaps and bounds in the past year, just as he had. Would it have been possible without _her_? He drew a swift breath, not wanting to think about her.

His gaze drifted to Liesl, still walking slowly with her eyes downcast. Her every step was measured, but slow and nearly sullen, perhaps even angry. "Liesl," he said, and her face came up. "Walk with me." She quickened her steps and caught him in a moment, meeting his pace just as she had before, but now her face was still down.

"What is the matter?" he asked, unwilling to dance around the question.

"Hmm? Why?" she asked, still in that quiet voice.

"Liesl," he said, "I know my own children." _I know them now,_ he thought, _because_— "You are too melancholy. You shouldn't have more hanging over your head than you must for the moment."

"I—can't help it, Father," she said after a deep breath. She looked up, past him to the platform numbers overhead, an elaborate iron _8_ hanging over their heads. "I can't help thinking that this is wrong."

"Leaving this country?" Georg had nearly said _Austria_, but Austria was no more, swallowed by some wild demon set loose by Hitler. "You cannot sympathize with Herr Zeller and his comrades?" That boy he had caught, throwing rocks at her window had saluted him as though a full-fledged Nazi rather than a boy of seventeen or eighteen yearning to be a man. If that bastard had poisoned his daughter's mind as well as his own with Nazi drivel—

"No," she said quickly, looking to him. What was painted across her face? Concern? "Not that at all, Father."

"Then what?" The trains they passed were as ordinary as ever, bearing none of the change that the world had endured. Inside their dimly lit carriages, uniformed conductors walked along, requesting tickets from passengers on a train that was nearing departure, sweeping, wiping down tables, and scouring the seats for rubbish in another that had just released its travelers. The plain fabric over the seat cushions was the same as when those trains had passed through Austria, not an extension of Germany, the lights just as bright.

"How can we just leave like this?" She looked up again, now seeking the number seven over their heads. "Without—" Her voice caught. _How can she think of him now?_ Georg thought, a burning rage rising immediately.

"Is there something you still wish to do?" he asked, forming each word carefully. Now was his chance to look up, to the number six approaching.

"I don't think we should just leave without trying to at least see—Fräulein Maria." The last two words—_her name_—rushed out of his daughter's mouth, and once they were spoken—that request that he knew was in every one of his children's minds—she busied herself with searching in her pockets for those tickets again. They had nearly come to their platform, and Georg looked back to his other children. Friedrich was carrying Marta again, her eyelids drooping; Louisa and Gretl were talking quietly to one another, the latter skipping along almost happily and kicking her skirts up with each leap; and at the rear, Kurt and Brigitta were still silent, glancing to one another on occasion, speaking in that unspoken way siblings so close in age sometimes can.

"Liesl," Georg began, reaching for her arm, but she pulled away out of his reach, toward the track.

"I'm sorry, Father," she said, shaking her head. "But why did you not even mention it?"

"Please..." He didn't know what he wished to say; Christ, did she understand that desperation he heard in his own words? He would have given almost anything to have a moment with Maria, to try to persuade her that she simply _had_ to join them—but there had been no time. No hope.

"Couldn't we at least have tried?"

"There was no time," he said. He raised his own wrist; still nearly twenty minutes before their train departed, and they had reached the track. Time to spare now, certainly, but not before. "Liesl, you've no idea how much I would have wished for you to see her again—"

"What about you, Father?" Georg stumbled at her words—an accusation they sounded, and when he looked to her face again, he saw a woman far older than his seventeen year-old daughter. Oh, damn it all, she had understood exactly what the pain in his voice meant. Louisa might have mistaken it for a love of Austria mixed into his words, but Liesl...well, she was older and wiser than that, and even had her own slight experience in the world of love, albeit that strange mixture of love and mystery that made up the affection of the young.

"I—" No, he could not say anything like that to his daughter! Confess that he—he _loved_ a woman less than ten years her senior? Oh, God, now he had even let that word come to be beside her! However well his children loved Maria, he just could not say such a thing! He was not sure his mouth could form those words.

"How much farther is it?" Gretl asked, her voice echoing up from where she stood with Louisa, and both Georg and Liesl turned back to the girl. She had snatched her hand out of Louisa's and now stood with her hands on her hips, her mouth in another pout. "I'm tired, Father!"

"We've found the track," he said, looking halfway at Liesl, who searched through her pocket again, this time removing all of the tickets.

"Here," she said quietly, holding the stack of thin papers out to him. He took them without glancing to her face, but instead Georg turned his neck to look along the train. The first class coaches were at the front, near where they stood, but he had purchased standard tickets; he anticipated any scrutiny would be less meticulous in the lower class. And though he had a large amount of cash on him, he intended to keep as much of that as possible for parts of the remainder of their journey, not for luxuries.

"So I can go to sleep now?" she asked, and Liesl smiled, walking away from him quicker than she might have just a few minutes before.

"You can when we're on the train," she said, taking Gretl's hand on her other side. "We're all tired, Gretl."

"Even Father?" The question was put to Liesl rather than Georg, and he shifted uncomfortably by the track platform when his eldest daughter looked at him, their conversation hidden already. He only hoped that none of the other children were as observant as she.

"Even Father." She repeated her sister's answer as though she did not believe him, and when she answered Gretl, Liesl still did not look at him.

The children were walking quicker now that the train had come into sight, Friedrich still looking after Marta who walked yet again with the train so near, and Gretl now clutching the hands of her two oldest sisters. Georg went on ahead, searching for the first standard coach available. The fifth one along the train was, and he paused at its already open door. Thank goodness that the trains were less frequent in the middle of the night, else they might have stood on the platform for some time before theirs had arrived. Even dressed as they were, so many children with a single man might draw attention. But with a couple— _Don't consider it._

He stood aside, waving on his children as they came, Friedrich and Marta, the boy twisting his sister's grip awkwardly to allow her to board first; the three girls that held hands, Louisa climbing the steps, followed by Gretl and then Liesl; at the rear, Brigitta and Kurt clamored aboard, Kurt standing aside for his sister, but climbing nearly on the back of her heels.

_They are all just as worried as he,_ Georg thought, taking the steps two at a time behind his son. His nerves were raw, and he wanted nothing more than to be done with this country, to leave Austria as a pure memory and forget the taint that Hitler and his regime left wherever they went, rank and oily over top.

In the coach, his children were already seated close together, and in their cluster of seats, the one by the window was vacant. Stepping slowly around legs, Georg collapsed into it. It had been some time since he had walked so far, and never carrying one of his children the entire distance. His legs and back ached as he never remembered since the end of the Great War—but would he soon be able to name it that? Some conflict was coming, not too far from this present time. But, sooner or later, it hardly mattered which. Germany had its hand around the heart of Europe, and with every pulse of that heart, every struggle against Nazism whether won or lost, the fingers tightened. The vice had begun to tighten the moment the Nazis had taken power just a few years before—how long until they lost that strength? Georg rubbed his hand over his eyes; his body yearned for sleep, but he could not rest.

The minutes until the train departed passed slowly, and every time he checked his watch, Georg glowered at the tiny hands spinning about that center. Five minutes to him were but a minute to that little clock. Around him, many of his children fell asleep, both his sons fighting against it valiantly but succumbing in less than ten minutes. Liesl held her younger sisters close, Marta and Gretl sitting together, already asleep in one seat between the older girl and Brigitta. Louisa was at his side, her face long as she away from him, out the other window.

The still moments had gone on forever, but at that time printed on their tickets, the engine roared to life, and the wheels began to grind on their tracks, carrying them forward ever so slowly at first, but gathering speed swiftly. The lights of the train station drifted away overhead, and soon they sped along the tunnel ever faster, accelerating until they emerged out into the city itself again, streaking away in between rows of buildings, the homes and shops of those who had chosen to remain.

"Father," Liesl said, holding one of her younger sisters closer, "will we ever be coming back?" The child closed her eyes and pressed herself nearer, though he thought she had already been asleep. That dark hair against Liesl's dress—it was Marta no doubt, but it could easily have been any of the three youngest, even Brigitta. Their faces were difficult to see in the scant light. He knew the question she meant to ask—would they ever be back to look for her?

Glancing out the window of the train to the city streets rushing by beneath the glare of the street lamps, those few blurred men and women walking as though nothing had changed, as though Austria were still a nation ruled by its own people and government, Georg sighed. Blind men and women, seeing nothing but the lies Hitler had to offer. "I don't know, Liesl," he said. God, he knew nothing now, only that they could not stay.

Just beyond Louisa, Georg had a glimpse of Friedrich, the sleeping boy's face pale beneath the spattering of freckles that had appeared over the summer, the result of the time Maria had spent outdoors with all of these children. Even in sleep, the fear still on them all, mirrored on Kurt's chubby cheeks. All of these children were just as afraid as himself, containing their own terrors admirably. Were Maria here, she might have them singing a song, at least thinking of something other than leaving their homeland forever—

But it hurt too sharply to consider that young woman. Perhaps some day, he might look back on this moment and think about her and what she might have done without wanting that quick breath. Wherever fate found them eventually, another woman just as capable would look after his children—though old enough to do so, Liesl was almost old enough to begin her own life—and they would love her just as well.

He lied to himself, he knew. It eased the pain.

The final streets of Salzburg vanished into the distance of the gray dawn, pale mist swirling into his vision. Somewhere in the midst of that city, beneath the mountains of her beloved Austria, cloistered in the abbey, Maria was still there—and his heart was with her. Wherever he went, he would feel that tug, and she would be in his mind no matter what his future was.

The early hour was difficult on his children; Louisa's eyes drooped as she fought a yawn, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder, bringing her closer. They all needed rest, even him. But he could not do so, not until they were safely out of reach of their enemies.

* * *

They had been on the train for some time, and the morning was dawning, the sun shining through the window to his left. Through the night, even when he had closed his eyes, he had not slept any more than long enough to jerk awake at the recognition that he had succumbed. Not until they had passed the Swiss border would he allow himself to truly slumber, and even then...he did not want to consider what—or whom—would come into his dreams. She had been so real often enough through the night when his eyes were closed that he almost hoped to find her in the coach with them, nestled in his arm, asleep against him.

Across from him, Brigitta had moved to sit closer to Liesl, filling the arm that was not threaded around Marta and Gretl. The Swiss border would certainly be near, then it would be a change of a train to begin the second leg of their journey, to Italy, then finally to begin the trip toward America. Most of the children had slept through the night, once the train had begun to move southward, swaying and vibrating gently. Even Liesl's eyes were closed, but Georg had had only those fitful moments of rest. His life—their life as they knew it, had ended.

_Oh, Maria..._He dropped his head against the glass, squinting his eyes against the gleam of the rising sun. But she was gone. _Maria._ He already ached for her, more than he knew he could for any person alive. Someday, he had to ask their forgiveness. Perhaps something might have been arranged. Damn it, when he had gone into the city to speak with Gunter, he should have found the time to pass by the abbey, to implore Maria to come with them.

But what good might that have done? Broken her heart that those children she loved—and he knew she had come to love them as though they were her own that she had birthed—were to depart? And that she was to stay? No, it would have been more pain heaped upon her. But she should have known. She deserved to know. Even with the time he had none of, the risk of being in Salzburg longer than necessary, he should have stopped there, just for a moment.

_Forgive me, Maria,_ he wanted to say to that woman who had sat with him through the night amidst the gentle rustlings of the train. She had calmed him when the conductor had come for their tickets, for those moments when other nighttime travelers passed through their coach, and whenever one of the children gave a sniffle or wet their cheeks with tears they did not feel. And now, in the early morning, his eyes bleary and blinded by the sun, her reflection was in the window, like she sat unseen in the seat across from him, comforting Brigitta just as Liesl did.

She could forgive him, he knew, but how could he ask? Despite his will, he drifted into a restless sleep.

_Maria was there, on the stone terrace outside the ballroom, wearing that same lovely blue dress that she had emerged in after the children had gone to bed, just standing as though she were as drawn to that place as he. She was turned away from him, simply looking out at the hedge, perhaps thinking of some new song to teach the children. The orchestra was playing again, the dinner break neglected. He went out to her, holding his hand for hers. Would she turn to him?_

_He thought to call her name, but he drew closer and touched her shoulder gently, and beneath that touch, she vanished, just fading into the air. "Maria!" he shouted, desperate to bring her back, but the word just echoed back, the need woven into her name the only answer he had._


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"This is not acceptable!" the man shouted, and Maria winced as she walked toward the Reverend Mother's office. Something in his tone was familiar, but she shook herself; perhaps she was just imagining it. She did not know anyone whose voice alone was so unpleasant. Certainly, she hoped she did not.

"I do not see why you disagree so strongly," the Reverend Mother answered. There was always a firmness in the old nun, Maria had recognized that when she first had come to Nonnberg to put her name in for the novitiate. Kindness that surrounded a stubbornness as hard as the Untersberg itself. "If you wish to speak with Maria, then this place should suffice as well as your headquarters."

Maria's feet faltered for a moment. Headquarters? Where was she to be taken? "It is not a matter of whether or not you have decided that my request has inconvenienced you, as you seem to believe." Just outside the office, Sister Margaretta stood, her arms crossed across her habit. Her face was straight ahead, and her body stiffer than was comfortable, as if she turned any attention that her ears might have claimed to the rest of her demeanor.

"Sister," Maria said, bowing her head gently to the older woman. Often times, Sister Margaretta had a smile for her when none of the other nuns did—not the least of whom was Sister Berthe—but Sister Margaretta's face bore a look darker than even the Mistress of Novices ever had.

"Thank you for coming so quickly, Maria," she said. Leaning around toward the door, just cracked as though whomever had closed it had done so poorly, Maria sucked in a deep breath. With a glance to the Mistress of Postulants, her stomach twisted quicker. Was she imagining it, or did Sister Margaretta not look to her eyes?

"I do not believe that such as your intention, _mein Herr_," the Reverend Mother continued from within her office, "but to take her from here would do us a great disservice."

"Is—is something wrong?" Maria asked quietly. Sister Sophia had come for her, not knowing anything herself but that Maria was needed in the Reverend Mother's office. For part of the distance from her small room in the postulants' quarters, Maria had held her tongue, but her curiosity had taken hold of her, and in those last few hallways, as her nerves filled her throat, she threw every question that it seemed she had ever felt toward Sister Sophia, flooding the hall with words that the nun did not answer.

Sister Margaretta's face was just as blank as Sister Sophia's, and for a moment, Maria bit back an angry remark. "You should not ask me," the nun said. It was what she was accustomed to hearing from those who did not want to give an answer, or were not entirely sure of what they had been told; more often in her experience, it was the former rather than the latter.

"What is one postulant in an entire abbey?" the man's voice went on. "If she will tell me what I believe she knows—"

"I believe she knows nothing," the Reverend Mother interrupted. The older woman had never been one to mince her words, and she rushed forward through what she meant despite the clearing of another throat that Maria heard distinctly. "As for inconvenience, Maria Rainer is one of our most devout postulants, and she has many duties to attend to—"

"None of which take precedence over the preservation of the Reich." Maria paled with that word, the realized threat that Captain von Trapp had so despised. Then, whom was this that demanded to speak with her? The voice spoke with authority—a high ranking member of the Nazi Party? The Lord send it was not so!

Just hearing the most polite terms for the Nazi goals, Maria wanted nothing to do with them, the policies, or those determined to see them through. It was unavoidable, though, with everything that had occurred. She had known the Anschluss had already passed, but to hear of its realization, to hear Austria named as a part of the German state...It was more than she had expected to have to hear upon her arrival. Certainly, the Captain would have been raging already, his beloved Austria...

She was suddenly warm, her face hot and red with embarrassment. "Are you ill, my dear?" Sister Margaretta asked, touching her arm. "No," Maria said, the words lower than she had expected. Was that what this man wanted with her, to ask her questions concerning the Captain? She couldn't understand why, for anything concerning his dislike for the German Reich the Captain himself was far more capable of discussing. And if he refused to speak with this man, then any of his friends were far more informed of his opinions than her. All she knew was what she had heard in the talks with Herr Detweiler she had overheard, even a few moments he had spent with Baroness Schräder that she had been unable to avoid entirely.

"I cannot understand what Maria Rainer has to do with preserving the Reich," the Reverend Mother said, and an affection for the old nun rushed through Maria. She was a well of strength, even when she seemed only a woman.

"That is not for you to know!" the voice snapped. There was still something familiar in it. "Enough of this dithering! I demand to see her!"

"Has something amiss happened?" Maria's voice choked around the words, her entire body throbbing. Something entirely unexpected, that had to be why she was wanted, for what concerns had she with the outside world? What little family she had she had long cut ties with, and her friends were within the walls of Nonnberg Abbey. All that had passed in the recent days—the _Anschluss_, the marching in of the Nazi soldiers—it had nothing to do with her.

Sister Margaretta sighed, and herself looked over her shoulder toward the just cracked door of the Reverend Mother's office. "Nothing more than has failed in the past days," she said.

"Then there must be a mistake." The door of the office creaked open, swinging lazily on its hinges.

"I hope that is all it is." The hinges squeaked now, and Maria winced at the sound grinding in her ears. As it fell open completely, the Reverend Mother was clutching the handle from her side of that door, her face grave. "If you must have it as you have asked, I shall send Maria with one of your men. Give me but a few moments with her."

"She shall follow me directly," the man within said, his voice louder; perhaps he had trailed after the Reverend Mother. "Send her down to the gate, and one of my soldiers will bring her."

"As you wish." The old nun bowed her head and stood aside for that man she had just argued with. Maria blanched as Herr Zeller emerged, his mouth tight beneath small watery eyes she could not believe had ever shown anything that might be kindness, and a mustache combed straight to his lip. She had not seen him since the night she had first met him—certainly why she had not recalled his voice—but everything of her impression was built on that night, the Captain's obvious distaste for him and the rudeness he had been unafraid to display when a guest in another's home.

"Guten Nachmittag, Fräulein Rainer," he said, nodding his head with a smile that just turned up the corners of his mouth. Even his courtesies stank of insincerity.

"Herr Zeller," she said with the smallest curtsy she believed she might make. To most of those she disliked, she still offered typical formalities as God would certainly have her, but she could not to this man whom the Captain so disdained— And the warmth was in her body again just at the thought of the Captain.

_It is not right to think of him,_ she thought, wrapping her arms around her middle. Hearing Herr Zeller's footsteps sapped the heat for a moment, but it surged again, lifting his face out of her memory. His hair that curved back atop the crown of his head, the tiny places by his ears just touched by the beginnings of gray, and his eyes...

In those last few weeks, from the moment of that ball Baroness Schräder had persuaded him to give had ended, from that next morning, whenever she had allowed herself to catch his eyes, she had been lost, almost as if she were drowning. As a child on her uncle's farm, she had spent many of the admittedly few summer afternoons she was permitted to have to herself in a swimming hole on the edge of the farm. When her skills at swimming had been tenuous at a particularly young age, she had often felt the muddy bottom dropping away from her feet as strongly in her stomach as she felt the water that rushed up past her chin, enveloping her until she pulled herself to the surface again. Even glancing into the Captain's eyes, she was just as free, dropping as heavily, but when she lost herself in him, she did not flail, and if she had been offered some support, she would not have grasped for it.

_No,_ she thought again, brushing away a word from one of the women near her. _You were nothing to him, just a hired hand. You performed the task that he requested of you, the one that God saw you there to perform—nothing more._

"Maria." There was an urgency in the Reverend Mother's voice. Had she called her name already?

"Yes?" she answered, her face coloring again, a deeper red now.

"I shall have to speak to you for a few moments," she said, still standing back at the edge of the threshold. Maria looked to Sister Margaretta for a moment, who had only a tight-lipped smile. The Reverend Mother walked quicker than her age indicated to those who did not know her well, and she was going to her desk without waiting for Maria, who passed through the door frame and pulled the door closed behind her. Sister Margaretta still stood outside, unmoved. "Please sit as well, my dear." Already, Maria felt on edge; even the customs that she showed to the Reverend Mother were not to be observed now? No, something was truly incorrect.

Though she was often in the Reverend Mother's office for some infraction of an abbey rule, there was a concern in the nun's voice that Maria was unaccustomed to. Stepping over to the front of the desk, Maria perched herself on the edge of the chair there without a word. The Reverend Mother's expression was dark enough that it pushed away even the strange heat that the thought of Captain von Trapp had created in her.

Taking her own seat, the Reverend Mother tried to collect her thoughts, find easy words to say what was to come. Much of it Maria was certain to have heard standing in the hall—Herr Zeller had made no effort to keep his voice low, and hers had been just as unrestrained—but the source of the difficulty, of why Herr Zeller demanded to speak with her, Maria certainly had no knowledge of.

"I am sure you know by now that Herr Zeller...wishes to speak with you, Maria." That was a good enough place to begin as any.

"Yes, Reverend Mother," Maria said, nodding.

"What I do not believe that you know is why."

"I do not, Mother. I do not understand what at all—how whatever he wants involves me."

The nun folded her hands, leaning across her desk without thinking. What had it been, nine or ten months before when she had first told this girl that she was to leave the abbey? Certainly no more. For sure, that had been a longer span of time, but this demand...

"It concerns the von Trapps, Maria." Best to simply say it, and be done.

Maria's back stiffened, and a flush covered her face in just a moment; frowning, the Reverend Mother's eyebrows dipped together. "Is something the matter, Maria?"

Maria swallowed over a dry mouth, and wet her lips. "W—why, Reverend Mother?" she managed at last. "I know that the Captain's thoughts on the _Anschluss_ will not be well-liked now, but what have I to do with this? Anything they wish to know could be more easily discovered from him." Perhaps they had already heard from him, and wished to learn from her what his thoughts had been in the time before the _Anschluss_. Would she see the children again? And him? Her heart pounded with that anticipation, and a flood of shame rushed over her. _How can you think such things?_

The heart of the matter had risen, demanding the words the Reverend Mother had been dreading to speak. She lay her palms flat on her desk. "I am certain that would be their course of action, Maria, but..." It had finally come to her mind that she did not know what Maria would say to this news, what she would do. A genuine fondness for the family had been obvious in everything that she said concerning the children, even the Captain. Sometimes, it emerged strongest when she mentioned only the Captain. "The von Trapp family is nowhere to be found."

"What?" Maria's breath was gone, vanished from her chest, and she nearly slid forward from the edge of the chair to the stone floor. "But, why—" _How could they leave?_

"I do not pretend to understand Captain von Trapp's reasons for doing what he has done," the Reverend Mother went on. "But, Herr Zeller, he is now the _Gauleiter _of Austria"—that was a disgusting phrase to have need to speak—"believes that you have some...knowledge of where they may have gone to."

"Mother, I have not been there in some time, not since I returned at the end of summer." How could Herr Zeller believe this, she wanted to say, but that first question took her mind again. The Captain had gone? And the children with him? A sudden emptiness erupted within her, as though a piece of her was missing along with them.

"Maria, are you quite well?" The Reverend Mother's voice was far away, and she had to blink heavily several times to clear her eyes. The corners were still wet.

"Yes," Maria said, the words thick. She swallowed another time, now trying to rid her mouth of the thick saliva she had conjured to keep herself from unleashing a sudden sob. "Then, what does he believe I might know?"

"I can tell you nothing, my dear." The older woman sighed, pushing herself up with her palms. "But there is nothing for you to do but as they have requested." Moving slowly beneath her habit, each step cautious, the Reverend Mother came around her desk, standing near the young woman. "I did what I could..." The words were hollow even to her own ears.

If the Captain had gone, taken his children...then he believed all was lost. Did he feel the same sudden loss that she felt now, Maria wondered. It was an emptiness in her chest, cold and burning hot at once, but without that warmth that she had felt before. Just heat, searing through her. How could she feel so...betrayed? She had the right to expect nothing. "Reverend Mother," she said in a small voice, "I'm frightened." She wanted to reach out for the older woman's hand, but thought better of it, and clasped her own together, a wad of her dress caught in between.

It was all so wrong—the end of Austria, Herr Zeller as the _Gauleiter_, the children gone...the Captain gone. Everything pulled away from her that was not built solidly on to stone. Even that, the walls of the abbey itself, was not enough to hold her: what remained she was being taken from. Were _he _here, he would have some answer, or at least a few words to calm her. Toward the end of the summer, when the Baroness had spent more of her time with Herr Detweiler once he had given up on his quest to transform the children into the von Trapp Family Singers, how many times had she seen him ease a child hurting, quell a brewing anger, sing a song that needed to be sung...The way he had looked at her, singing of that lovely flower. Had he meant those words escaping from his mouth, when he had looked to her as though he saw through the nun's façade?

And what of herself? Oh, Father God, even now she had not escaped him!

"What have you to be worried over?" the nun asked. When the first soldier had arrived at the gate of the convent, bearing his message that the _Gauleiter_ demanded to see the postulant Maria Rainer, she had been unable to think of any reason. Maria had been within Nonnberg for nearly all her time since she returned from the von Trapps; even in those times she had ventured out, what would she have done to arouse the anger of the ruler of subordinated Austria?

"Nothing," Maria whispered, dropping her face, but the Reverend Mother just clucked her tongue. Maria always did such things when she was nervous, trying to make herself appear smaller. For a moment, the postulant had been away from the room, perhaps in a memory of the family that had vanished.

"Nothing you can think of?" the Reverend Mother asked. She did not mean to pry, but if Maria was frightened, then surely there was something to worry over. Maria's childhood had not been the most pleasant; and far more than the other postulants who had come to Nonnberg Abbey seeking entrance into the novitiate, the girl did not frighten easily. And whenever she had reason to be nervous, worried, even frightened, she faced that unknown with a smile, not this trembling.

"No," Maria said distantly. _How can they be gone? _she thought. _The _Anschluss_ occurred, but Austria was not entirely lost to the Captain._ And God help her, now her eyes truly were wet, tears threatening to streak along her cheeks before she could wipe or blink them away unseen.

She saw the sparkling drops on the postulant's face, slipping over her eyelids slowly, but the Reverend Mother went on as if she had not. "Perhaps it is as Herr Zeller believes, and there is something that the Captain mentioned to you, just as a remark—"

"I would not tell him even if I knew what he wished to hear!" The outburst was sudden, even to the Reverend Mother, and Maria shrank further on to the chair. If she spoke without thought again, everything that was bubbling within her would be plain to see. But, how had they simply left? When, if what she could now see meant anything... "I—I apologize, Mother. That was entirely inappropriate."

"Feelings are not inappropriate, Maria." Another part of the matter? The Reverend Mother was not certain. Not fondness that Maria displayed, mayhap, but something deeper and more genuine than fondness allowed. A different look in the girl's eyes, a distance whenever she did not notice another watching her, and now this strange sensitivity to the von Trapp family, more than an affection for those seven children allowed.

But she could not speak of it to Maria now, not when a car with a soldier waited outside the abbey walls to take her to the local headquarters of the Nazi Party. Whenever she returned, that would be soon enough to discuss what she had suddenly seen. If what she suspected was truth, then Maria did not belong here; she belonged at the side of the man she loved. "Then you have nothing fear." Pushing aside her thoughts,the Reverend Mother smiled, and offered a hand to the younger woman. Maria grasped at her fingers tightly, never wanting to let go. Here, she was safe, in the presence of another woman loved by God. Remembering the protection of the Lord calmed her, easing her already churning stomach. Was it only the nervousness surrounding the approaching time that she had to spend alone with Herr Zeller that set her on edge? Oh, she didn't know, she didn't know.

_Lord_, she thought, turning her eyes up in a silent prayer, _help me to answer as I must, to do Your will as You wish it done here. Help me find courage._ She had never before prayed for courage; there had always been an abundance left from her childhood, when she had needed much. _In the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost, amen_, she finished, closing her eyes for a moment. Every bit of her childhood courage was now spent.

There were no other delays to be had, no other excuses to be given; all she could do now was go out, and do what was demanded of her. Whatever it was, she would survive. Taking her hand from the Reverend Mother's and standing slowly, Maria smoothed the black wool of her postulant's dress, another short prayer passing through her mind.

_Deliver me, Lord,_ she thought, kneeling to kiss the Reverend Mother's hand. The whispered words from the older woman were only echoes in her ears, a quiet blessing that she nearly missed. All that mattered was the will and direction of God, now; she had nothing else to hold. God help her, she was so alone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"Fräulein," Herr Zeller said, exasperated as he looked at the young woman who sat across from him, "I am not here to discuss some small slight against the Reich that you have committed, which you seem to believe is my purpose given your attitude." He tapped his fingers along the edge of the table, narrowing his gaze on the postulant across from him. "I mean to have the answers that you must know."

"I do not know anything, Herr Zeller," she said, looking to her lap. She crossed her hands on her legs, much more demure in in her postulant's dress and wimple than the occasion he had last seen her, in a faintly flowered dress, then one of a sky blue, smiling and gay. Here, she was somber as a postulant should be, the beginnings of a nun's life already on her shoulders.

"Come now, Fräulein," he said as he leaned back in his chair. "You spent so much time with them."

"I had not been there in many months," Maria said, lifting her eyes slowly. It was truth; once or twice a week it seemed, she had considered taking a moment to visit the children, whom she missed desperately. But each time, she had hesitated. Something held her back—but it was nothing she recalled as a fear. Nervousness, oh yes, but not fear exactly.

"Not for anything, Fräulein?" Herr Zeller asked. "I doubt that very much, my dear."

"You wanted the truth, and I spoke it," Maria snapped.

"Yes, I did ask you that," the _Gauleiter_ said. Now he pushed his chair back, and rose to stretch his legs.

"Then do you have any other purpose for me here?" she asked, lifting her face. Whatever the Captain had seen in this man's face she understood, now. A tight, twisted mouth beneath a thin mustache that only covered the width of his lip, and eyes colder than any she remembered.

"You will tell me what it is you know."

"I do not know anything," Maria said. God help her, after these first few hours, if it were not that it was the Captain, his children, she would tell him anything if she knew. But she knew _nothing_. The Captain had never allowed her to see that side of himself, the fear and anger that surrounded the possibility of the _Anschluss_. That he had left after the union, she was not shocked to hear, but that he had left so quickly, without even a thought to a word to— What was she thinking? _Remember all you were,_ she said to herself. Then why did she feel she had become so much more?

"Then what you think you know."

"I do not know anything," she said again. She wanted nothing more than to put her head down; all of this wore on her, repeating again and again that she did not know anything Herr Zeller wished to hear and that what she did know—he would scoff at.

"Fräulein Rainer—"

"I cannot tell you what I do not know!" She should apologize for her rudeness to him, but she did not want to! When the man was so unkind to _her_, even cruel in what he wanted to discover, then why should she show him the slightest courtesy? She answered her own question in a moment, the words of Christ coming through her mind: _"You have heard the commandment,_ _'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' But what I say to you is: offer no resistance to injury. When a person strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other."_ And another: _"You have heard the commandment, 'You shall love your countryman but hate your enemy.' My command to you is: love your enemies, pray for your persecutors...If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that?"_

But—to apologize? That was too much for her. She would and could watch her words more carefully in the next moments, yet...Maria glanced to the man across from her, tapping his fingers impatiently on the battered table. Asking anymore than that caution was more than she could offer. When all he wanted was to find the Captain and the children, to bring them back—and oh, God, what would await them? Even if she had known anything, that realization would have driven it from the front of her mind, far enough that she might feign ignorance entirely!

How had she not recognized it then, when she left the villa? Kissing each of those children good-bye, persuading them that they should not cry—well, she had said that to neither Gretl nor Marta, and seeing their faces, she had been unable to keep her own eyes dry—and sensing that she should never set foot inside its walls again. That place had been her home, _become_ her home far more than the abbey had ever been. The journey back with Franz, sitting in the back of the car...she might have felt that same emptiness if at the beginning of the summer she had gone to her uncle's farm again, rather than the von Trapp home.

Their home had become her home, wherever they were was her home—and they were her family, not the nuns that she still loved. The love of the sisters was different, affection rather than—what? She couldn't even name what it was that bound her to the family, and to the Captain. Was she even confident of the word that most would attach to it? No, she could not even allow herself to think it! She loved the children, but any more— No, she couldn't! She...no; if it wasn't possible, then why bother? Already, it deepened the more she considered it. Why should she think if it might have come to be with just another few days, a few words between the Captain and herself? It could never have been anything but a flight of imagination, something in which she was well skilled.

She was here, now, trying to convince this man that she knew nothing she had not already said. Looking at to Herr Zeller again, it steeled her against that man, and everything he desired. Yes, if she had known anything at all, she would have swallowed it if it came close to coming from her mouth.

Across the table, Herr Zeller sighed again, grinding his fingers against the bridge of his nose. How long would she evade him—lie to him for whatever reason? However long, he would find the answer he sought sooner or later. She did not have infinite strength, and one way or another of the Nazis had broken every other façade he had encountered.

* * *

"Fräulein," Herr Zeller said, "I will confess I am at a loss." Hours he had spend with this woman, watching her wilt beneath his questions as exhaustion, thirst, and hunger set in, but she still maintained that diffidence.

"Why?" Her tongue was as strong as ever, though. "I have told you all that I know—"

"I refuse to believe that, Fräulein!" he snapped. He was pacing, walking the length of the tiny room in a half score of strides, then back again. "Three months spent in that home—and you know nothing!"

Maria rubbed her eyes, trying to push aside the heaviness that threatened to bring her eyelids down and invite only the Lord knew what as a punishment. "All I can tell you is what Captain von Trapp thought of—of the _Anschluss_." It was a tainted word, now, touched with pride by the Nazis. To even think of that word, let alone speak it, in the same sentence that mentioned the Captain...it turned her stomach. If he was not so virtuous in her every memory of him, not without his flaws, but always with his integrity and honor, it might not have been so disgusting. He was the man he was, and she would never have changed him any more than he had to become the father his children craved. Anything more would deny the Captain his soul.

"And what do you know that I do not, Fräulein Rainer?"

"Nothing."

Herr Zeller sighed. During the hours that he had passed, his subordinate, Johannes Kahn, had taken over this questioning for a time, but those minutes to himself for a meal and a cigarette had not been enough. He was growing tired of this woman and her evasion. Damn her, she had to harbor _something_! And if she did not, what was one postulant to the Reich? A woman already lost to them, someone not to be missed...a lesson from which others might learn.

"What did the Captain tell you of his opinions on the _Anschluss_?" he asked. He had asked this question many times before, and Christ, he wanted a different answer!

"That he did not want it to come to pass," Maria said, the words rote by now. How many times had she already answered as such? Her eyes were dull, and she could focus on nothing more than Herr Zeller's face, seizing on his gaze. If she did not, she would not care anymore. Seeing him, though, she remembered just why she sat in this place rather than at prayers in the abbey. "Just like _many_ Austrians—"

"Fräulein, I do not want to hear drivel. If the Austrians were foolish enough want to remain a state of their own, they would not have voted for the _Anschluss_. What did Captain von Trapp tell you he intended to do after the _Anschluss_ happened?"

"Nothing, Herr Zeller."

"Stop telling me your lies!" God, he wanted to slap this woman, to bring the sense that she must have _some_ of to the front of her mind! No person could be this inane! "My patience is beginning to fail, Fräulein."

"Then return me to the abbey, and follow whatever you wish to find him." She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms across her chest, almost pressing her chin to her chest. No, she would not look him in the eyes again! If she did, certainly he would see that she wished him ill luck in that search.

"It is not possible, Fräulein," Herr Zeller went on, stopping for a moment. Just one woman in a nation of millions, one woman who would never be missed, only forgotten. If that was what she demanded of him to extract whatever it was in her skull, then he would do as she wished, as her behavior required. Taking those final steps to the door, he pulled the door open; enough men patrolled the halls of this building to make use of one.

As Herr Zeller shut the door behind him, Maria's shoulders drooped. Her entire body was heavy, a single mass of exhaustion that ached beneath its weariness. If she were here for much longer, she knew she would fall asleep in this chair, undoubtedly angering the rat of man who had sat across from her. Just a few hours of rest and she would again be ready to answer their questions, the same questions she had already answered, but with the answers vigorous—

"You, Schulte!" Herr Zeller called, his voice echoing through the crack between the edge of the door and the floor. She straightened at the sudden sound, a bit of the tiredness dropping away. Feet scuffed along the stone hallway, and despite herself, Maria leaned forward. She didn't understand why she even tried, when the door was closed, and being just a bit closer to the door would not make a difference in the muffled tones she heard.

"Heil Hitler!" That greeting, and the clicking of heels, came each time she saw any soldier encounter Herr Zeller, and he responded the same.

"Heil Hitler." His was nearly a dismissive tone, the voice of a man accustomed to the words spoken, while the other spoke with a new enthusiasm.

"Yes, _Gauleiter_?" The same voice spoke again in answer to Herr Zeller's first request, but it was softer now, easier to hear and much less harsh, the voice of a man awaiting instructions. It was still anything but gentle.

"Take this woman downstairs." Those feet were moving again, the sounds coming closer, and Maria leaned back into her chair, pretending that her curiosity had not gotten the better of her, as it always did. The handle on the door rattled, and she dropped her eyes, the black fabric of her wimple slipping around her face, almost as a guard.

"Where to, _Gauleiter_?"

"To whichever room you would like." Maria stiffened now, her face rising once again as the door swung open. A young man stepped through, his blond hair cropped short around his face and his uniform crisp and perfect. His face was too young to be a soldier, or even one of the Party members.

"And then, _Gauleiter_?" he asked, turning back to the hallway. Herr Zeller came into view over the younger man's shoulder.

"Just leave her," the Nazi sneered, his mouth just as cruel as ever beneath his mustache, and Maria was not sure if she trembled at the sight of his face or the poison in his words.. "Let her spend some time there, and she'll eventually find her tongue looser."

The next moments were blurs in her mind: the younger man had her arm, pulling her forward into the hallway, down one way to another, then along a set of stairs. She stumbled a bit, and he snapped at her to be more careful. How many flights had they gone down? More than she had gone up when the soldier who had delivered her to this place had taken her to that room. So she was underground now, she realized, perhaps several stories.

"Come along!" the soldier said, steering her into another corridor. Only a few lights glowed from the ceiling, and their beams fell far from one another, dark patches filling those blank spaces. Oh Lord, where was she? Maria turned to look back to where they had come from, but the hallway was just as foreboding behind her as it was before. All she could do was continue forward, the tight grip a vice on her arm.

Some time had passed since she had been so frightened, but she was terrified now. What would those children think, she who had been so brave in that thunderstorm, or in holding her ground in speaking with their father? But neither of those were the same as this place, this moment. Even knowing that, she still realized what Gretl, perhaps even Marta would say: _Would it help to sing about our favorite things?_

_Raindrops, roses, the whiskers on kittens, kettles, mittens, melting snow..._Even the happiest of those things did not push away the tears wetting her cheeks as the young soldier pulled her onward still. To where, she did not know.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

There was salt in the air, wind rushing around him, and waves crashing against the ship. Georg breathed deeply, closing his eyes in the midday warmth, just standing as the ship rocked gently back and forth beneath him. Even with the years that had passed since he stood on a ship's deck, not just in command but simply _upon_ a deck, the smells, sounds, and sensations still remained.

Opening his eyes again, Georg leaned forward on the railing, peering over the edge to the sea below. Blue waves crested to white foam against the steel cliffs, throwing spray up, and when a particularly large swell came, the tiny drops splashed on his own face. He felt young again in those moments, as if he were still aboard his ship when Austria was not Germany—no, not even Austria, but the Austro-Hungarian Empire!

The world had been pure, then, untouched by the carnage and slaughter of the Great War, but with what Hitler must intend, for how much longer would that conflict bear that name? Until other nations looked to the German state and saw death, he mused, clasping his hands together. They had escaped all that, though, passing through Switzerland to Italy, and at last finding passage on board a steamer ship bound for the United States of America. He had chosen to spend as little time in Italy as possible, the thoughts of Mussolini and his pact with that devil in the back of his mind for those few days.

In those first few days, the children had explored the ship gleefully, learning the nooks and crannies of each deck, Friedrich and Louisa often coming to ask him one thing or another about the craft's build. Often he spoke beyond what they comprehended, but it warmed him through to see any of his children so curious about his passion. Liesl had watched the younger girls, who after the first day or so waxed restless, wanting to be at their destination already. Kurt and Brigitta passed the hours in one of the ship's lounges, playing games with a deck of cards they had uncovered their first day aboard. Fortunately the ship had no library, else Kurt would have been alone in his cards, flipping them up again and again in Solitaire.

As the days had worn on, though, many of the others had joined them, and they had needed to search for two additional decks to have enough cards. Neither Kurt nor Brigitta admitted it, but Georg suspected they did not have the natural sea legs his other children seemed to possess. But around their growing card games, both had become more adventurous the longer they spend aboard the _Andrea Celesta_—an Italian liner—and more accustomed to the dips and rolls of the ocean with each day. Or perhaps they just tired of one another's company. So much time with another person had the potential for almost suffocating boredom, Georg thought with a grin, and if that person were a sibling...well, the possibility was almost a certainty. That one person in the world that time passed with easily and pleasantly was rare, and if you were to find that person, you were fortunate.

The grin faded from his face as his stomach dropped, not from an unexpected shift of the deck but the memories. _Maria._

Oh, God, how had he thought to himself to leave her? Unless he flung himself in one task or another, or buried his mind in the memories that the scent of the sea air and dull drum of the water on the ship's hull brought to life, all he thought of was her. Whenever they sat down for a meal in the ship's dining room, the questions Liesl had given voice to were on nearly every face whatever the conversation that covered them, imploring him to answer before they needed to speak their queries. _Why did we not go to see her? Why didn't we say good-bye? Would she have come with us?_ It was almost too much to look his eldest daughter in the eyes, now, the questions glimmering and waiting for the proper moment to be spoken again.

"How much farther is it to America, Father?" The worry dissolved for a moment, and Georg looked down to that child who had spoken: Brigitta. She had come to his side without him noticing, and Kurt was at her side, curling his fingers around the railing while he looked down to the sea with a paling face. His daughter, only a bit shorter than Kurt because of those months difference—when she reached the age he was now, she would certainly have height on him—had set her feet on the lowest rung of the railing to look down more easily. He settled a hand on her shoulder, pushing her gently down and back. In a moment, she jumped back to the deck again.

"It's not too much farther," he said, turning back to the sea again. Brigitta's long dark hair whipped in the ocean breeze, snapping over her shoulders and his elbow and arm with gentle cracks. "We've come most of the distance already."

"Good," his youngest son said, leaning back. A few of the children had reddened faces from the clear skies and sun shining on the clear, gleaming water, but Kurt and Brigitta were paler if anything. They avoided the top deck as much as possible, a consequence of their unsteadiness, but perhaps Kurt simply did not care for the sea. Brigitta's unsteadiness had all but vanished, and she had no difficulty looking down to the ocean. He had hoped to pass his love for the ocean to all of his children, but he would not force the boy to enjoy the passage. He could not in any case, but he would not ask his son to feign that he did.

"Are you eager to be on land again, Kurt?" Georg asked, and his son's face shot up, his mouth in an indignant frown.

"No..." he began, but Georg just smiled and waved Kurt around to his other side. He did not hesitate, and stood even nearer than Brigitta did.

"Where are the others?" Georg asked, and his daughter shrugged her shoulders. His brow knitted together before he realized he did so; while the girl was often quiet, she answered questions swiftly if she had any idea of the answer.

"In the lounge when we left," she said after a moment.

"They were playing something different," Kurt added, standing back from the ship's rail.

"Sure you two didn't just tire of cards?" He looked to his daughter, but she did not look back, peering to the roaring ocean instead. Something was troubling her, he was certain.

"No," Kurt said, not noticing his sister's silence. "We just thought we'd leave for a bit."

"Why don't you go back down, Kurt," Georg said, still looking at his daughter. "I'd like to talk to Brigitta for a moment, then we'll join you and have an even larger game."

"Really?" Excitement filled his voice, no doubt the same that would fill his face when they entered the harbor in New York, and overtake him when he had his feet on solid ground once again.

"Of course." He nudged his son away from the rail. "Would I—" He had to stop the words before he ended the question, for it would cut his daughter deeply, if her look now was any consideration. _Would I speak a lie to you?_ Yes, yes he would, every time he had insisted even to himself that they had not gone to see if Maria might come with them because of the time. Because he was afraid, not that they would have too little time but afraid of what she would say, what her answer to that question would be.

Afraid that she might say no.

"All right," Kurt said, running along the deck. His desire to leave the uppermost deck had overcome his nervousness. "I'll tell them to start shuffling again!" The din of his feet vanished in a few moments, with his shadow as he found his way to those same stairs that had brought him to the surface. With his son gone, Georg turned to his daughter.

"You're very quiet today," he said, not knowing where he meant to begin. Brigitta was something of enigma when she was quiet. Her mind and mouth were both sharp and quick most often, but when she kept her thoughts to herself, it was impossible to know what weighed on her. She only shrugged her shoulders again.

"Have you enjoyed being on the sea?" he asked, pushing the conversation elsewhere for a moment.

"It's large," she said quietly, pushing herself on her toes to look over the railing again.

"Yes," Georg said, nodding his head. _And beautiful, wonderful..._Like the arms of a lover that opened in an embrace he had not felt for ages. She had not answered his question, exactly, but he suspected that her enjoyment of the ocean had been tempered by the shakiness she had likely felt those first few days."It's most of the earth, Brigitta."

"I know."

"I thought you did." If any of his younger children knew such a thing, it was to be Brigitta; her older siblings had certainly learned such things in their schooling already. All that time she had spent in their library in Salzburg, a geography book must have come into her hands, even if she preferred novels. But he had dithered long enough, beating around her silence like he had beat around the silence of his men in the war. It had nearly destroyed some of them; Brigitta's was certainly not that terrible, but for such a young child, it was just as heavy. All he could do now was to press forward.

"Brigitta, what is wrong?" he asked, turning her toward him. She turned back once his hand was gone, and he twisted her around again. "Brigitta."

"Why did we just leave?" The question sprang from her quickly, and she still did not look up. Georg sighed, then crouched down, wanting to be closer to her at this moment than their differing heights allowed if he stood.

"Brigitta." His daughter looked to him, and he was able to meet her gaze levelly, and the power in her face amazed him. Every bit her mother's child, with that same power to speak through her eyes and the turns of her mouth and brow. "We could not stay," he said quietly.

"That's not what I meant," she said. "We left without saying good-bye. How could we do that?"

"Sometimes...we must do these things, even when we do not wish to." God knew that was the truth! "I can't say anything different."

"I—I—we just—left her." Brigitta spun to lean against the ship's rails, her skirt flaring out. "She would never just have left us without saying good-bye."

"Circumstances change, Brigitta." He had known these questions would be asked eventually, but that made them no easier to answer. Were it another of his children asking them, he might have devised answers that went around the questions themselves, but not with Brigitta, the girl just as sharp as Liesl.

"But—"

"Brigitta!" He snapped her name, and she shrank away from him as he stood. "There's nothing we can do now. We're already past all that." He stretched a hand to her shoulder again, but she pulled away.

"We still had time." Her voice was more hurt than he remembered ever hearing, and before he said anything else, she was running along the deck with her dark locks snaking behind her, and he could not bring himself to call for her to remain.

The card game that followed was cold, passed almost in silence, except for a request for a card or a declaration of victory, and Brigitta never glanced his way. Georg could not have met her eyes, where that unspoken question was asked: _Why did you not want to say good-bye?_

Dammit, how long would his children be so desperate to know? Georg nearly threw his cards down, but it would only draw their eyes, and those questions he could not answer. The empty silence was easier to bear than the silence they might as well shout.

* * *

He dreamed of Maria that night, of just being near her. They sat on the shore, the tide surging in as they watched from a perch upon a pile of rocks. He held her closer than ever before, their souls nearly touching as he listened to her breathe, matching the timing of that tide. Or did she sing? It was as natural to hear those beautiful notes escaping her mouth and chest as to feel the rise and fall of her back against his arms and torso.

The ocean still drifted higher, coming to their bare feet, and the white clouds fluttering across the sky reached below to embrace their companions in the waves. They were one as never before, and he leaned close to her ear, whispering the words he had never spoken to her before, the breath ruffling her short hair: "I love you, Maria." She dropped her head back onto his shoulder, the weight of her body slight and warm as the ache of denial vanished from his heart.

In that moment, she vanished, suddenly a wisp of air in his arms. She had nearly spoken, and her eyes had been gleaming like the sea as she opened her mouth. Had she wanted to answer the query that had been in his words? He had not heard her answer.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

**October, 1945 **

Twisting the page in his hands, Max Detweiler walked the length of the room again. God, how many times did that make, ten, eleven? He still had no idea what to do with this paper he held, except what he knew he must. How difficult would that be, though? As if he had not just survived difficult times, he remembered, and as though difficult times did not lay ahead. His life had been rudely interrupted by Hitler's war, shattering years of friendships and dozens of networks that had aided his work. Not that much of what he specialized in would be needed by the Austrians now, he remembered. What they needed was rebuilding, not festivals and musicians, no matter what their talent!

Austria needed the men it had lost, but some were many forever, entombed at the bottom of the oceans in their _Unterseeboote_ for the German navy, dead in the battlefields, or vanished overseas. Too many of the men Austria were needed fell to those first two sets, and those few in the third had new lives in the countries that they had taken to. Men like Georg.

Max had not had any letters from Georg himself, but Gunter had received one letter from him, with a postmark from the United States. In Vermont, if he remembered correctly. His geography was not the best in Europe itself and abysmal elsewhere; for the location of the various American states, Max needed an atlas or a map, but he had been unable to find one. The train station had been lain to ruin by the bombing campaigns of the Allies, and the libraries and bookshops were either closed or destroyed as well. Whatever the case, he had his old friend's address, all he needed to send some sort of missive across the Atlantic. If the postal system worked well enough in Europe's ruined lands to ferry a letter to a ship.

He had already written a letter to his childhood friend, a simple greeting inquiring after the children and the life they had created in the United States. What Georg had written to Gunter had been vague, more filled with gratitude to that man for everything he had done in aiding the escape from Austria before the war had broken out. But Max needed to know more. Not just to revitalize the memories of those children that called him Uncle Max and performed a puppet show with their governess, singing a silly song of a lonely goatherd but to know what Georg had _done_ in the United States, how his life had continued on. He hoped beyond all reason that his old friend had not dwelt on everything he had left in Salzburg. But by God, Georg could brood.

He turned again, walking the length of his room another time. The apartment he now occupied was little more than a bedroom and a tiny kitchen that had tested his meager skills with pots and pans, but it was far more than many in ravaged central Europe had to their name. When he considered Dresden or Berlin—and when his mind really wandered, Max recalled the news of the damage the Americans had inflicted upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan—he felt quite princely in this small place. Perhaps even Elsa would not turn her nose up at this!

The letter he had penned lay flat on the kitchen table, the already addressed envelope beside it. Sending that was not what weighed on him now, but whether to send what he now clutched in his hands. When he had first heard of it, sometime in the beginning of the war, he had not believed the news, but months of investigation through careful contacts and discreet questions had confirmed what had happened. He had been unable to do anything during the war to tell Georg of it or indeed to right the wrong that remained, but with the war ended, he had the resources. A few sheets of paper, a pen, enough stamps to send a letter across the ocean—and a rubbing. The entire reason that this letter _had_ to be written.

This was the first thing he had done when the war came to an end, the first thing he had planned to do from the moment that the entire course of events had come to his knowledge. Max shook his head, folding the page in half. Georg deserved to know. But the rest of his letter might well be read to the children; the decision belonged to Georg whether his children would learn of this. It did not fall to him.

Sitting down at his kitchen table, Max picked up the pen that lay beside the letter he had already composed. If he added just one other page, it would be enough to send the tidings that were needed. Wetting his mouth, he wrote quickly; if he let himself consider the words, they would never come.

_Georg,_

_I hope that your time in the United States has allowed you to move further than I fear this news will now permit, but you needed to know. I leave it to you whether you will share this with your family._

_Your friend,_

_Max_

The envelope was beside the letter, and Max folded his note around the blackened sheet he had already folded in half, then his letter around both. He flicked the top of the envelope open and slipped the three sheets in. He turned the front of the envelope up, to the address already in place in the center. _Georg von Trapp._ God, he had not written that name in ages, almost the same time since he had spoken it. He could only hope that the children paid mind to the name on that letter.

Georg would forgive him at some time; after all, knowledge was preferable to ignorance.

* * *

"The mail is here, Mother!" Gretl called, the front door slamming closed behind her. A brisk autumn breeze whipped past the home in the Vermont countryside, the air outside cooler than she liked. But inside, it was warm

"Just leave it on the counter," her mother answered, her voice echoing out of the kitchen, gliding upon the wafts of a baking pastry. Some tart, Gretl decided, perhaps made from the apple harvest that continued to be brought in from their small orchard. And cinnamon! Those scents all mixed together in her nose, warm and delicious. Lately, the foodstuffs that had been rationed during the war had begun to appear more regularly on their table, but nothing like what she could just remember in Austria.

Her mother was an excellent cook, and every person who ate at their table agreed, whether it be in regards to her meals or desserts. During the rationing of the war, she had planted countless vegetables and stretched their usefulness almost further than Gretl had imagined possible. She scratched her head as she walked, reaching just beneath the final layers of her hair that had darkened from its childish ash blond to a true brown that matched her oldest sister's. Their home here in Vermont was pleasant, even in spite of the hardships of the war, and Gretl had a difficult time thinking that Austria had ever been anything better. Having her two older sisters and oldest brother in the home again would be the only thing to add to her happiness.

Turning the corner to the hallway that led to the kitchen, Gretl leafed through the mail. Most were brown envelopes that likely contained bills; another was one of the frequent letters that arrived from her oldest siblings, this one from Louisa who was away at her college for her final year of study, addressed in her small, precise handwriting. Louisa's letters were each fun to hear, as her father always read them aloud, just as he did Liesl and Friedrich's. Every sentence contained her wit and sharp tongue. Second from the bottom was a white envelope with heavy writing—and a postmark from Austria! She almost stopped in her path just inside the kitchen.

"Gretl?" She almost didn't look up to her mother, standing at the sink with her arms covered in soap. "Is something wrong?"

"There's a letter from Austria," she said, almost biting her tongue.

"What?" The black-haired woman snatched the towel from over her shoulder, drying the white suds on one arm, then the other. "Who from?"

Gretl looked to the return address, almost more excited than she could stand. "_Aus Onkel Max!_" she exclaimed, slipping into German. Her memories of the man were vague, more created by the tales of her brothers and sisters, but they comprised a funny man who irritated their father in a good-natured fashion and was a genuine pleasure to have near.

"How many years has it been since your father has heard from him?" her mother asked, throwing her towel over her shoulder again. She spoke quicker than she usually did, not wanting the girl to go off chattering in German. Despite all of her years in the United States, more than she had spent in Austria, the thirteen year-old still spoke her native tongue fluently and often switched to that language when frustrated or particularly agitated.

"He hasn't, not since we've been in the United States." The other letters were forgotten in Gretl's hands as her mother came closer to her, though they were already quite near in the small kitchen. "He's been worried about everyone in Austria, especially when he didn't get an answer from the letter he sent to him."

"I guess he has his answer. Is it addressed to your father?" her mother asked, holding a still damp hand to her youngest daughter.

"What?" The girl had turned the letter over, and her thin face wore a longing gaze as she looked to the sealed edge.

"Gretl," she said louder, recognizing the mischief on Gretl's face. "Is that for your father?"

"Yes," Gretl said, bringing her face up with a jump. "But it's from Uncle Max. Do you think Father would really mind—"

"Yes, he _would_. Just leave it with the rest," her mother said, tugging that particular letter from Gretl's fingers.

"But—" As a child, she pouted in moments like these, but she had learned in the past years that such things did not sway her mother's decisions.

"Will you go help Marta?" She was not asking anything of her daughter; the girl's younger brothers were only five and a year and a half old, young enough to be troublesome on their own and a wicked pair. Marta had been the first of the older children to arrive home from school, and she had been given the task of watching them while the preparations for dinner began. "She has Christopher and Eric to watch, and Brigitta has not arrived home yet."

Gretl frowned, but just shifted her bag on her shoulders, school books and notebooks moving from one side to another. "Yes, Mother," she said, and she handed her mother the rest of the mail.

As Gretl went upstairs, following the sounds of young, boisterous voices, her mother dropped the pile of envelopes on the counter, settling the letter from Austria on the top of that stack. Georg would be excited to hear of any news from Austria, she knew as she turned back to the sink and plunged her hands into the soapy water another time, and Sabina von Trapp always did her best to please her husband.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

"Father, when will you open Uncle Max's letter?" Gretl had already asked the question a dozen times over dinner, and now that her mother's apple tart had emerged from the kitchen for dessert, she had not forgotten her query.

"After dinner," Georg said again by way of an answer, cutting into a bit of the flaky crust. His wife's skills in the kitchen showed in the meal she had prepared, as always, and most especially with sweets. Looking down the table, he smiled gently at her as she leaned over to right Christopher's fork in his hand. The daughter of immigrants from what had once been Poland, he first encountered Sabina in the parish church he and the children had begun attending in Vermont. She had immediately been a bright and kind, if demure, young woman to his mind, and in the months that followed, a gentle affection for her had grown. Friendship and companionship mixed together with the way in which his children took to her, and a year later, he had married her. Not just for himself, but for the seven children that he now called _theirs_.

It was a pleasant life they had in Vermont, one much removed from the ease of their home in Austria, but just as removed from the horrors they had left behind. His family was whole, though, with him in the midst of it, where he was meant to be. And Sabina was as wonderful an addition to their family as—

"But it's _after_ dinner, Father," Gretl said, and Georg dropped his fork beside his plate, exasperated.

"Then what are you eating, Gretl?"

"Dessert," she said, her tone just as strong as before.

"Yes?"

"That's not the same as dinner."

"Can't this wait?" Marta asked, pushing her own plate away. For the past few days, the girl—no, the young _lady_; Georg had to remind himself at times that she was fifteen—had possessed very little appetite, something he hoped her mother would soon talk to her about. He had no skill in speaking to his children about such things.

"But we haven't heard from him in such a long time—"

"Nothing will happen if we wait fifteen more minutes!" Brigitta said, a little louder than Georg thought she meant. "His letter will still be there." This girl, the eldest of his daughters still living at home, had been snapping often now, weighed down by the final year of her senior high school education, and already nervous about her chances in higher education.

"But I want to know!"

"Gretl!" Sabina called to her daughter, seated at the foot of the table opposite her husband. "Let the rest of us finish the tart, and then perhaps we can move on to the letter." Gretl frowned, and sat back in her chair, crossing her arms on her chest. At the head of the table, Georg sighed as he reached for his water. He almost wished that letter had never come, bringing with it what it did: the reality of Europe, of what Austria was now.

And the memories.

* * *

Unfolding his friend's letter, Georg was as excited as any of his children, now. Gretl had sulked through the remainder of the meal—the rest of the tart and coffee for himself, Sabina, and his two oldest children sitting at the table—but he could nearly taste her excitement now as she sat on the floor beside him. It was his own as well as hers, and it had crept up on him as the dark roast of coffee had filled his mouth and as they had come into the den, overtaking the irritation from before. What on earth had made him think that sitting on the floor was a wise idea? Perhaps because he meant to open a letter from Max, and that made the moment absurd enough!

"What does it say?" Gretl asked as Georg set aside the envelope, not willing to throw it away. Several pieces of paper came out of the envelope, and he opened to the middle, filled with his friend's precise, if less than elegant script. As poor as Max's characters sometimes appeared, each letter was distinguishable, even if only to one who had learned to decipher them.

"If you'll give me a moment..." He reached into the pocket of his coat for his reading glasses—his eyes were no longer so strong—and hooked the ends over his ears. They slid forward a bit on his nose as always, but the words were clear, now. "_My dear friend,_" he began, "_and to the family who is certainly clamoring over his shoulder at this moment..._" Gretl giggled at that, and Georg smiled at his friend's greeting. For a moment, it was as though he was opening a telegram from him all those years earlier. Moving to the next line, he continued to read it aloud. "_I shall not trouble you with the main news of the war's end..._"

But it was not what Georg had expected, and certainly not what he hoped for in Max's words. Nothing worthy of true notice stood out in the lines of the letter. Max had written this at the beginning of the month—November, with the chill of the Vermont winter mixed in its crisp air, was just two days away—and so most of what he had to say was certainly no longer true.

The devastation Max had written of was undoubtedly the same; not enough time had passed from the end of the European war, and no nation in Europe had money enough to repair the enormous damage to its infrastructure. And the destruction of the history, the culture—Georg did not want to think of that.

Max's sentences were unusually guarded for a man who often spoke and acted without thought, unless the matter was of serious concern to those he loved or it involved his _own_ money. A few of the sentences were even empty, words strung together without a real thought, like Max's mind were occupied. Some information, something unpleasant, was buried beneath the phrases. _He just did not want the children to know,_ Georg decided, rubbing his fingers along the pages' edges. His old friend's letter extended onto the back of that first sheet, and Georg turned it quickly, continuing to read it aloud. The signature was on that page, as disheveled as it had ever been.

No postscript followed the name, unusual for a letter from Max, and ample room was below on the dirty page. Surely paper was in short enough supply that whatever was on those second and third pages would fit well enough into that space.

"Is that all?" Brigitta asked, and Georg looked up from the pages in his hands. His daughter was frowning, clearly as disappointed as himself.

"Yes," he said, "I believe so—"

"May I see it, Father?" Gretl asked, putting out an expectant hand from his right side.

"Just a moment." Georg offered it to his wife, who took it from his larger hand with a small smile. Sabina was a very quiet woman. "Let your mother look first."

"You'll have it in a moment," Sabina said, reaching her left hand around Eric to lift the upper half.

Georg glanced back to the pages he held, and with the words on that first sheet of paper, he was more puzzled than ever. A few short lines, marked by none of the absent-mindedness that was a testament to Max's whimsy in nearly every task he set himself to. After his greeting, the letter had been almost morose.

_I hope that your time in the United States has allowed you to move further than I fear this news will now permit, but you needed to know. I leave it to you whether you will share this with your family. _What was so frightful in Austria that Max doubted even the older of his children should know? They all saw the newsreels that displayed the destruction that sprawled across Europe, read the newspapers with their reports on the bombings in Germany and Japan, and listened to the radio reports of what was occurring in Europe now. He was more befuddled than before, with a nervousness growing in the pit of his stomach as he opened that third sheet.

"He didn't say very much," Gretl said. Sabina had passed the letter to her, reaching across before him as he had looked to the short note, and his youngest daughter's quick mind and eyes had scanned the letter already.

"No," Georg said in agreement, reaching a hand to Gretl. She frowned, but handed the letter back, and he placed it on the table just behind him, the flat edge just at his eye level from where he sat on the floor.

"Is there anything else in those?" Kurt had been silent through dinner—aside from Gretl and the bickering that had surrounded her comments, his older children had been quiet as death at the meal, as they had been before Maria arrived in their home in Salzburg—and when they had taken seats on the floor around the warmth of the snarling fire on the hearth in the small den. But that young man had often been silent of late, and Georg had not pressed him.

Already in the recent weeks, they had disagreed enough. Though no longer in Austria, Georg had always wished one of his sons would follow him in military service. Friedrich had instead gone into medicine, just beginning his first year of medical training in September, leaving his hopes with Kurt. But the boy had declined, stating his intention to study a science of some sort, geology if he remembered correctly. Whenever he spoke to Kurt, Georg tried to ignore that silent wall between them.

True, Christopher and Eric might elect for the military, perhaps even the navy, but somehow it did not seem the same. They had no time in Austria, no memory of its noble past in their schooling, and would be likely to receive none. The history of military service in his family—the _Austrian_ history—died with him.

Georg did not answer his son's question immediately, instead opening the third page entirely.

"That's not much either," Gretl said, leaning closer to her father; he pulled the pages closer to his chest, the second still splayed out with the last fingers of his left hand.

"Let your father read it first," Sabina said, and the girl leaned back, with a small glower for her mother. The Lord send she did not become like Louisa when she had been that age. Gretl was more talkative than her older sister, but her moods were just as susceptible to lightning quick changes.

The third page was dark, covered in a lead pencil, though the other pages were in pen. The gray lay across most of the paper, not in lines like a letter, but as if drawn on. He held a smile at that thought; Max was no artist, only a developer of talent in others, or as he termed himself, a very charming sponge. Georg had nearly forgotten how greatly he missed the man; holidays and other family celebrations felt a bit empty without him, as though a chair was waiting for him that he was not coming to fill. He turned the page over, but the back was almost as dark with the shadow fading through, just a few white ridges breaking through here and there. A rubbing, maybe, but it had smeared in the transit across the Atlantic.

"I'm not sure it's anything," he said after a moment, folding the short note before holding the spoiled page out to his wife.

"It doesn't look like it is," she said, immediately shifting it from Eric's reach. The toddler was grasping for it like he did everything else, but his fingers still brushed the dirty page despite her efforts. "Oh, Eric..." Each of the pudgy fingers of that hand were black with the shining lead. She took his hand, rubbing at the black, but it only came off on her fingers.

"It's time he and Christopher were in bed anyway," Georg said, taking the page that Sabina handed back to him. He tugged his reading glasses from his nose, folded them, then tucked them away in the same pocket where they had lain before. His vision was as strong as before otherwise, but he could simply not see as well as before when it came to reading. "And I'm sure you've all got some reading to do." Marta shifted uncomfortably near the fire, and Gretl frowned at her father's statement. Perhaps those two did not, but Georg did not want to answer further questions.

"Father," his youngest daughter began, "may I see—"

"Gretl." Sabina stood more gracefully from the floor than Georg might have, balancing their youngest child before her. "You heard your father."

"But—"

"No arguing, my dear," Georg said, standing from the floor as well, and leaving the handful of pages. His first glance was to the clock, reading just a bit after half past eight. He then looked to the fire, burning down to the last embers. When the children were in bed or at their homework, there would be time enough to deal with whatever remained of the sparks in the ashes. Then perhaps, he might find something to do with that letter and the pages that had come with it.

Across the den, beside the fire and Marta, Christopher sprang up, running over the polished wood to his father, who bent to open his arms to his son, enveloping him in an embrace that consumed the boy. "Come along." A few years ago, he might have carried the child, but he was older, and the boy was heavier, so Georg simply offered his hand; Christopher took it eagerly, skipping a bit to keep pace as he walked with his father. Just as his vision was weakening, the strength of his body was ebbing away one bit after another. When he saw Liesl with her own son, how she easily kept pace with him, lifting him whenever she wished, he felt every bit of his fifty-six years.

All around the room, the children got to their feet, following their father from the room while Sabina stood, fussing with Eric's dirty fingers. Kurt, Gretl, and Marta all passed her in a few moments, each pausing for a moment to say, "Good night, Mother," to which she responded in kind. But the oldest of the girls she had not seen, and Sabina looked back to the den.

"Brigitta?" The girl just glanced to her mother. She had stood with the rest, but stood beside the center table of the den, examining the blackened page from Max. Eric squirmed in her arms, and Sabina moved him to rest heavily in just the crook of one elbow. "Is something wrong?"

"Is Father really not very worried?" She lowered the paper after a moment, but still clutched it with one hand, brushing a bit of dust from her dark skirt with the other. Though Sabina had first met Brigitta after any youthful tomboyishness would have grown out of her, the young woman had tended toward silence, preferring her books and journals over spoken words. Her posture, eyes, and face spoke more than her words ever did.

Sabina bit her lip at the question; when she did speak, Brigitta did not talk around what she wanted to know. "I think your father hides most of his troubles from us, darling." She adjusted the squirming child again, bringing Eric into both arms. "With everything that has been happening in Europe...I don't think he wants to worry us as well."

"But Uncle Max wouldn't send this to us if it wasn't important." She lifted the paper delicately, the top dipping under the slight weight of the charcoal in spite of the fold along its middle. "And this worries _me_, Mother."

"If your father doesn't believe it should, then I don't think you should concern yourself with it." Sabina hoped that what she said was not so conciliatory as it sounded to her.

"But it does, Mother. I just can't ignore it. There must be something more."

"Don't let it bother you." She went back in to the room, the heel of her shoes clicking on the wooden floor until she stood by her daughter. Sabina lifted her son to press him against her shoulder, and reached out a hand to her daughter's arm. "Don't let it, Brigitta." Brigitta smiled a bit, but her gaze was still dark, and she let the page fall beside Max's letter, as well as the short note and the envelope. Sabina did not ask if she had read that note, for she certainly had. "It is time you were doing your homework, darling." Sabina took a tentative step to the door, and Brigitta followed.

"Just let me find something in the library for tomorrow." The library that the Vermont home had accumulated was substantial, but nothing to rival the library of the Austrian villa.

"What did you finish?" Sabina asked. At the door, she waited for Brigitta, and once her daughter had passed her, she flipped the light switch off.

"_The Prince._"

"I've never read it." Though she was a bit wider read than many women, Sabina's knowledge of books and novels was nothing to rival her daughter's, or her husband's for that matter, and she knew it was not likely to overtake either of theirs.

"A lot of people haven't," Brigitta said, brushing hair over her ears. It had grown longer over the years, only shortened in fits and starts, and now reached past her waist; she often tied it up in various knots. "It wouldn't interest many people, it's not a novel."

"I hope your father would not have disapproved," Sabina said as she went to the stairs. Brigitta crossed the small foyer to the dark library, twisting to hold her mother's gaze.

"I don't think so."

"Well, don't be too long," Sabina said, taking the first of the narrow stairs and ignoring the sly tone of Brigitta's words, "and be sure to do your school reading before you begin whatever you select."

"I will, Mother." Sabina had had no fears of Brigitta neglecting her studies from the moment she met the girl; brighter than any of the others, she was determined to succeed. The greatest fear was that after reading her assigned books, she would be up into the night with whatever she chose from the shelf for herself.

"Good night, Brigitta."

"Good night, Mother." Even as the light in the library blazed on, her daughter's voice was still troubled.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

It had only taken a few moments for Georg to put Christopher to bed, just long enough for the boy to change to his nightclothes and to be persuaded beneath the sheets. He had returned to the den for a time, pounding the last life out of the just burning embers.

The contents of Max's letter still lay on the table in the middle of the room. Why had he let the flames die out already? Looking to those papers again, a mad desire to find a match to set to them surged in his chest! The ruin of Austria had come into his mind so plainly with everything his friend had to say to him, more vivid than the moving images of the newsreels or the fluid words of the newspapers' journalists or the radio stations' reporters. This man was a friend, a close friend at that, reminding him of everything he had escaped and left others to endure.

Even Maria.

But he had left the letter on the table, though collecting the other two papers that he tucked into his breast pocket. They were not meant for the eyes of his children, as Max had seemed to have decided, just from those words in the shorter note.

And now he sat in the chair beside the window of the bedroom he shared with Sabina, simply looking out. The dark of the night had overwhelmed the power of even the stars and moon, the sky filled with mere pinpricks of light that commanded no power. The same sky loomed over his beloved Austria, the same stars shone, and the same moon gleamed. Somewhere beneath those stars in the sky, still at home in Austria, Max was there. And was she?

The door of the room opened, and he looked over his shoulder. Sabina had come in, a wet patch on the corner of her dress. Eric undoubtedly had not wished to have his fingers cleaned, Georg decided; like most boys his age and older, the child did not like to be washed and scrubbed.

"Is Eric asleep yet?" he asked. He already knew the child would toss and turn for a few minutes—that was simply the way Eric tired himself out—but the words were preferable to the silence that would otherwise command the room.

"No," Sabina said, taking the first of the few steps toward her husband. "It will be a bit longer before he's finally resting."

"Good," Georg said, not listening. He turned back to the window, and a bit of cloud drifted past the moon lazily, swooping up and down. Clouds filled those same Austrian skies, the skies that were the same as those here—but why then did they feel so different in his memory. One was warm, pleasant, and immediate, the other burning hot with a passion and distant.

Behind him, Sabina frowned. Her husband often kept his thoughts to himself, but after the first words from a man he had spoken of fondly many times before, he was unusually quiet. He had told her of his experiences as a captain in the Austro-Hungarian navy, and his posture as he sat in that chair, simply gazing out over the fields that he could not see, that was how she imagined him as: a _Captain_. Looking over an ocean that went on beyond his sight, knowing only what filled the range of his eyes. But now, he looked back to his home, to something that was beyond his reach, perhaps even his mind.

She sat on the arm of the chair, just perching there, and Georg snaked an arm around her waist. He wanted to simply sit for a time, feeling himself and his wife breathe. Max's letter had resurrected a thousand memories that time had eroded. People and places he had forgotten, small moments that had been the magic of the world of Austria and Salzburg.

"You're quieter than usual," Sabina said in her own small voice. Georg didn't answer; in the letter he had written to Gunter, and that which he had received in response, there had been just as many happy memories, small and pleasant times that he had neglected as well. He had known and felt those again when he had penned the words that he had sent.

But Gunter was only a reminder of Salzburg and Austria, of what had been his home. Max, though...Max was forever linked to _her_, to all the time they had had that summer. The renewal of his family and his life, everything that was good and beautiful in his home country, all of it went to her; if he thought of those happy times, she came to his mind as well.

"Georg?"

"Hmm?"

"What are you thinking about?"

"I'm just—thinking." Oh, God, he couldn't let her hear what was on his mind now. Remembering her, even if just in passing— No, his wife needed to know nothing of all that. What he had done and made, this life and the people he loved, all of that was far more precious to him than a memory, no matter how happy. That memory was nothing more than air. Less, even. The air at least was real, something that had form in a place other than his mind, even if he were unable to see or feel it.

"Brigitta believes you're worried," Sabina said. She dropped a hand to her husband's shoulder, running a finger on his broad frame once, twice, and again. Georg shivered beneath her touch and pulled her closer, almost tugging her from the chair's arm. He had never fooled Brigitta; her eyes were too observant and her mind too quick.

"She shouldn't think that," he said. None of his children needed to have those same memories consume them.

"Will you at least tell me what it is?" Sabina asked and her husband stiffened. "Because there is something."

"Please don't ask," he began, but she only moved her hand to his jaw, turning his face up.

"Georg, please," she said, and he sighed. Whenever he had a glimpse of her eyes, he could hardly deny her a thing. He had first noticed her eyes when he had met her in their church all those years ago, paired a bright and vibrant blue that he had not expected beneath the head of beautiful dark hair.

But how could he admit this to the woman that he loved, that he needed just the barest memory for every moment he had spent with Maria to come flooding back. How long since he had thought of her name? Years at least. More had surely passed since he had spoken it.

"I don't want it on you, too," he whispered. All he wanted to do was to hold his wife, not to think about the past but of the future, just to forget anything that was not here and now.

"But whatever is yours is mine," she said, spreading her palm over his cheek. "Even if it was before I knew you, my love..." He pulled her closer, and she slipped from the arm onto his lap; Georg wrapped his free arm around her body, holding her thin form closer, simply feeling her heart beat, and her chest rise and fall with each breath.

He loved her with every part of himself, more than he had believed ever to be possible again when he left Austria, leaving _her _behind. But how could it have been such a surprise, when just as he had found with Maria, he had simply discovered that it was possible to love another woman just so much as he had loved Agathe. Sabina was here and now, and he loved her so much more than himself, than anything he desired.

Tears pricked at his eyes, and before he knew anything else, Sabina's hands were there, brushing the tiny drops aside. "Please," he heard her whisper, but he just buried his face in her shoulder. How could he feel this division, loving both of these women so very deeply? "Everything in Austria," he said, quietly, the words muffled. "I had not thought on any of it for so long, of what it was. I had not thought about—the destruction."

"It must have been a beautiful place," Sabina said, touching his hair.

"It was." It was all lost in that statement. "Some part of it must still be."

"It all will be again." An indistinct sound rose from his throat, but it sounded like a disbelieving groan; she ignored it. "Will you tell me about it, Georg?" She had never approached this piece of his past so directly in all the time they had been married. She knew the background of her husband, that he had borne a title in his homeland, why he had left that place, but of the people and events she had never questioned him, choosing instead to hold onto each memory that he offered her. From the first moments of true intimacy they had shared, she had known that those questions would be far too painful.

"I—" He wanted to so greatly, wanting to share this with her, to let her into this final part of himself, but the words stuck in his throat, suddenly dry. "Not now, love, not now."

"But someday, will you?"

"Yes," he whispered. That much he could promise. Not the date, but at some time. When it was not so raw and so painful. He kissed her cheek, the skin just warm beneath his lips. _I love you_, he wanted to say, but his throat was too hot, and the words would only be raspy.

Sabina stroked a finger along her husband's cheek, curling her body closer to his. She wanted to know what it was that he did not say, because it clearly troubled him. Just the expression on his face, darker than was typical, was hiding something from her. But if he would not speak it just yet, then she would not press him.

Georg knew what he needed now, but the words—they would not come. He _needed_ Austria just as he needed the air that he breathed, needed to see it, feel it, touch it. The Untersberg had to brush against the sky before him again, the Edelweiss smell as sweet as he remembered, and the bells of Nonnberg toll as they had throughout his life in Salzburg. He needed the past as desperately as he needed the woman that he clutched even closer than before.

"Will you go there with me?" he asked. The words spilled out of his mouth before he thought of what he said, rushing out on a torrent of that need. He had to share this place with the woman that he loved, to truly let her into this final part of himself. Had he created a separate man that she knew, one that tried to forget Austria and its beauty? Perhaps, but that final piece of himself he needed to offer to her.

"What?" She tried to pull away from him a bit to catch his eyes, but he just held her tighter and kissed her neck.

"Please, Sabina," he whispered. "I need you to be there with me." God, she had to see it all, see everything. He could not even say why, but he needed her to stand there with him, to be in his arms as he looked out at the same stars that glimmered above him now. "Please, my love."

"Georg, you can't go back." She pressed her dark head against his shoulder, just feeling him for a moment. When she thought of the way that he remembered Austria, of everything Austria was to him, she could not see herself as a part of that. What was in Austria was not something that she knew or understood as she knew and understood her husband and the children that she had become a mother to.

"I have to, love."

"Not yet, then," Sabina whispered, "please not yet."

"It's all fading, Sabina." He moved a hand to her shoulder, rubbing his palm over the rounded joint. "Those...those places that were everyday. The roads, the fields, the markets. The ordinary Austria is being overshadowed by the unusual, like those daily places never were."

"Then someday, Georg," Sabina said, holding closer to him. "Don't go to see it now." She wet her lips, uncertain of what to say next.

"But someday," he said for her, drawing her closer still, wanting to destroy the boundary between them, the flesh that held him apart from her. "And you will be with me?"

Sabina shuddered at the question, not only because of the exhaustion that suddenly consumed her. How could he need to ask?

"I need to have you there with me," Georg said. "I need to show everything I remember to you. Before you—" The rest of the sentence was unspeakable: _Before you leave me_, that had been what he meant to say. Every woman he had ever loved he had lost, whether that was his mother, Agathe, or Maria. Sabina was here in his arms, _now_, and he did not want to think about what would pass eventually, that she too would die, just as he would. "Before everything is changed," he said instead.

"It has already changed," she said, stroking her fingers over his face again, his cheeks still wet with those quick tears she had brushed away. "It changed as soon as you were no longer there, once it was no longer your home." Her parents had known that, never returning to their homeland, but preferring it as they remembered it. Whole and unblemished.

"But I must see it before it is no longer recognizable," he said, and she sighed. Her husband was not a man to be deterred. "While I still know it as I did before. Come with me, love." She heard what it was that he did not say. _I need you to be a part of it._

"Of course I will," she whispered through a yawn and flickering eyelids, resigned. If he wished to go, then she would follow him, for what else could she do? Whatever his wishes, they were hers as well; her heart belonged to him just as much as his was hers. "I love you." The words had just slipped out as she struggled to remain awake; his body was so warm, as warm as the fire that had filled the den earlier. Did he say something? She didn't know as she slipped into a dream.

He wanted to thank her, to kiss her, but more than those, he wanted to never let her go. Her breathing was that quiet, rhythmic beat of sleep, so Georg just pushed her hair away from her face, the strands cool and dark. _Thank you_, he thought, to his wife, to God, to those in his homeland who had sacrificed to aid their escape. Without any one of them, his family and he were nothing. Everything that they had and were in this place they owed to another, he realized as he fell asleep as well. _Thank you_, he thought just before the heaviness of the night overtook him, _thank you._

When he woke the next morning, hot in the morning's rising sun, his wife was still there, curled up and small in his arms. She slept on, and in that moment, he was nearer to her than he ever remembered, bursting against that barrier. Through the night, though, he had felt nothing but the two of them entwined, twisted together into one being that knew no difference between its two forms.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Brigitta despised deception, but it had been unavoidable tonight, not only once but twice. The first had not been a lie expressly, simply giving off a mistaken impression to her mother. The second, though, that had been direct and spoken; the library in their home did not possess a copy of the book she intended to find, _The Leviathan_, by Thomas Hobbes. That book she doubted her father would ever permit her to add to his collection.

It had been in the city library, though, at least earlier in the week, and she meant to sign it out the next day on her walk home from school. But the family's library offered a convenient excuse, and she had seized it. Her mother's footsteps overhead died out, and Brigitta flicked off the light of the library. Her father would be down again to put out the final embers of the fire, leaving her just a few minutes while he wrestled Christopher to bed.

The elder of her two younger brothers could be a terror at times—at least Eric was young enough to not know any better—but Brigitta was grateful for once as she hurried across the small hall, almost reaching down to hold her flapping skirt against her knees. At the den, the flickering firelight was enough illumination to find the path to the table in the center of the room, and she went in without turning on the electric light.

Reaching that small table in moments, Brigitta shifted the various pages, searching. She did not want Uncle Max's letter, nor his note, nor even the smeared rubbing. What Brigitta wanted—needed, she thought—was the envelope that had delivered those words.

Whatever her father said, there was something..._wrong_ in what Max had to say. Darker than his words were, as though he had meant to keep something just for her father, as though what he had to say was only there to cover what he meant. He had not shown them Max's short note, but when she had looked over them after her father had gone, there had been nothing in those lines to confirm anything except that Max wished something to be only for her father's eyes, unless he chose to share it.

So it was that smudged page that was the true reason Max had sent that letter, not for the words contained therein. But not even her father truly knew what it was supposed to mean. She had to know, though, and the envelope that lay by the letter bore Max's address. It would be the end of her father's trust in her; but that did not matter, and it was almost painful how immediate and stark that decision was. After all, what could have been so incendiary that from across the Atlantic Max feared her father's wrath? Fräulein Maria. Only Fräulein Maria.

She had been too young to understand entirely what passed between her father and her governess—Brigitta had nearly understood that evening at Baroness Schräder's party, when they had danced the Ländler, just seizing on the smallest bit of what it meant in those moments immediately following—but only a few years afterwards had she truly comprehended, when she had learned that her father meant to marry Sabina. Brigitta loved her mother well enough, and certainly respected her, but there were still times that she longed for Fräulein Maria.

If she wrote a letter to Uncle Max, would he answer? If he had refused to reveal the news about her former governess in the letter he had known her father would read aloud—indeed, Uncle Max's salutation had been the only portion of his letter that had contained his familiar spirit—then perhaps not, but could it be harmful to try? No, she had nothing to lose if he—

Were those his steps in the hallway? Brigitta scampered to the doorway of the den. A shadow was just coming into sight at the top of the stairs—undoubtedly her father returning to put out the last sparks in the coals. He couldn't find her down here now, not if she wished to send Uncle Max that letter!

_I need to hide,_ she thought, her heart beginning to pound against her ribs and her hand sweating on the envelope that she clutched. Where? Nowhere in the den, her father was too sensitive to noises and small movements for that, and besides, what if he turned the light on? He might decide he needed it since he meant to put out the last light of the coals. Then another room, one that was dark— The library again! The top of his shadow was just beginning to descend the steps, she needed to be out of this room, and now!

Hiking her skirts up to her mid-thigh with both hands, crunching the paper in her hands, Brigitta launched herself from the den. Her palms dampened the hem of her skirt where she bunched it in her grasp, but it would dry, and as she dashed into the darkened library and flung herself against the wall beside the doorway, Brigitta let the folds of fabric fall. She was breathing hard, sucking down one nervous breath after another, but the footsteps were louder and closer; she bit her tongue and held her breath. If she kept still, then all would be well and fine.

The snap of the steps on the wooden floor came nearer for a moment or two, then dropped away bit by bit—her father walking across the hall. And yes, she just heard the click of the light in the den. If she had remained, then certainly he would have discovered her. Ordinarily, Brigitta would not have worried over her father finding her downstairs, for she was often down selecting a book to read or confirming a fact for a paper she had to write. But with what she held...No question was in her mind that he would disapprove.

Something crunched or crumbled, and Brigitta almost stepped toward the sound, her instinct for curiosity overcoming her caution. She had left the wall and turned around before she remembered that she had just hidden! But her father had come into her sight, beside the den table, just looking down to the pages still there. He was nearly haggard, and for the first time he appeared old to her. Brigitta had never truly noticed her father's age—he was simply her father, an ageless figure that had been present in every moment of her life—but he was newly ancient. She crept back to the library wall, holding a flat palm to it like an anchor, still just looking at him. He had aged years in minutes, the mystery of whatever Max had meant weighing on his mind.

She never remembered being truly and hotly angry at the man she had called her uncle when she was just a child, but she burned now! Just as all those years ago she had been angry with her mother for not only leaving them but taking their father with her, she hated Uncle Max for a moment, before she realized what she felt. Even if it was concerning Fräulein Maria, had he needed to write to them, to tell them?

Perhaps.

Her father looked back to the hearth, some of those pages fluttering in his hand, then he lifted them to his jacket, slipping his hand inside to tuck them into his jacket pocket. She peered closer at what he had left, one of those pages. Max's letter no doubt. Nothing was in that epistle that he would have reason to keep from his children. There was nothing truly in there at all. More quickly than she had expected, he began to turn toward the doorway, and Brigitta ducked back behind the library wall, holding her breath again; she had let out the first without noticing it.

Again, the sound of his feet rose as he crossed the hall, then faded as he nearly came to the stairs, and she breathed again, creeping out from the library just a bit, enough see him at the first of the steps. Her father's gait was slow as he ascended the stairs—nearly a lazy pace even though her father was anything but slothful—but Brigitta still clung to the wall as his back remained turned, not venturing any farther than she already stood. If he seemed this ancient now, to her, how old would he be for Christopher and Eric? How old was he at this time, approaching sixty perhaps? Had she never noticed before?

His shadow disappeared from the stairwell, though the light remained on. Was Sabina still about? Probably, surely trying to scrub Eric's fingers clean of the lead pencil. But she could be here for ten, twenty minutes, nearly an hour maybe, just waiting for Eric to yield. Or she could tuck away the envelope and simply say that she had been unable to find Hobbes' book. A light sound, Brigitta just caught the running water, and if that was still needed, then Eric was still fussing. Biting her lip, she stepped out into the front hall.

She had the stairs in a few moments, and took them quickly, hardly feeling her feet on each step, her shoes light and quiet. At the head of the staircase, the sound of running water vanished, now replaced with a splashing sound, Sabina trying to clean her youngest son's hands—perhaps even his face now! Brigitta just went on creeping past the closed doors of the other bedrooms; even her parents' was closed. Only a few steps now, and she let herself breathe easier as she slipped into her own bedroom, not even flipping on the overhead light but just easing the door closed.

Simply breathing for a moment, Brigitta slumped against the door. Without any other person even knowing of this, she had a weight on her, and she felt old as she lifted her clenched hand. It was trembling, and she shivered; why was she so scared? Pushing herself away from the wooden door and walking across the room to her desk, she switched her desk lamp on, dropping the paper beneath the blaze of light. The envelope was crunched and sweaty in her palm, and a few traces of the ink had bled through the paper to her skin. But every word was still clear, from their home address to the postmark that marred the stamp to the address of Uncle Max's home. To be sure, she was not concerned with the first two, but the last—it was perfect just as she needed it.

Brigitta had meant to sit at her desk and write that letter tonight, but just coming into her bedroom, finally alone and hidden, she was overwhelmed by a heavy exhaustion. More than simply being tired, it stuck in her chest, a terrible, aching sadness that filled her; it dulled her mind, but it stung as much as anything ever had. Tugging on the lamp's chain another time, Brigitta just let what she had to write alone. It was no longer a choice, but now a task; the ignorance that she possessed now was not something she could retain. It had to be done away with, whether her father wished it or no.

She rarely wanted to cry, but this evening, as she sat on the edge of her bed, the teardrops were warm in the corners of her eyes. Pulling the quilt up and over her shoulders, Brigitta lay down without bothering to change into her nightdress, nor even to kick off her shoes; tonight, all she wished to do was lose the control that consumed her now, that tightened the despair within her. To just turn onto her stomach, press her face against the pillow, and cry until she had no more tears, that was all she wanted. Why did it all seem so new? Leaving Austria—her home!—and losing the woman she had loved as well as her mother? Everything in the past bit with a sudden and new pain. A trickle crept down from her eye, but she brushed it away with the edge of a fist. Was that what her father had been thinking when he had looked back at the fireplace, when he had appeared suddenly so old?

She had never seen her father weep, not even when her mother had died. Would he ever? _Had_ he ever? He must have when he was a child, but the differences between a boy and a man were unfathomable. Tightening the quilt over her body, Brigitta closed her eyes against the warm tears that pressed against her eyelids. In the morning, it would all be just as new, but perhaps she could hold it further away. The pain could not come any nearer to her, though, else all she would have left would be that ache.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Max coughed again, just as he had been doing for the past few months. His health, just like that of many others in Salzburg, was not the best, but it had worsened measurably in the recent weeks and months. A nagging cough that had begun as nothing more than a chest cold, this coughing grew in intensity with each day that went by.

Whenever he was not troubled by the pain of his cough or the destruction that still surrounded him despite the American occupation—and admittedly, those times were growing fewer—Brigitta's letter weighed on him. He had thought that nothing would happen to...well, _damage_ what he had sent, but evidently, he had been incorrect. He knew that especially in the aftermath of the war, trans-Atlantic mail had been unreliable, but he had been unaware of the state of it all!

Another convulsion racked his lungs, and his hand shook as he glanced to Brigitta's letter again. Did he dare put this into words? Could he? He had done what he had before to avoid that, to dispel the need to form what seemed to be impossible to say. He wasn't even sure if it were possible, but perhaps he should.

How old must Brigitta be now, eighteen, nineteen even? Whichever one, she was certainly an adult and very capable of her own choices, whatever the wishes of her father. As a child, she had been as headstrong as any girl he remembered, though in a quieter way than her sister Louisa. Georg had tried to perhaps forget that tendency in the girl, but then again, his old friend had a predilection to protect his children more than necessary, aside from that span of time when Agathe's memory had been too painful to do anything but shove them away. Or maybe it was _because_ of that time.

His chest seized again, and Max raised his free hand to cover his mouth, though his rented rooms were empty save for himself. Dropping his hand, he lifted the folded top of her letter— Max's heart skipped for a moment, and then began to pound in earnest. Blood was on that palm and seeped through onto the young woman's letter, spreading slowly through the fibers. _What is this?_ he thought, his fingers trembling. Had this cough, whatever its cause, become this serious? Once more he coughed, but this time a burning pain raged through his abdomen, near the bottom of his lungs, and another mouthful of blood flooded his mouth, smelling of copper.

The doubt was fading from his mind already, and he scrambled from the seat at his table to the bookcase across the room, wanting a sheet of paper from the stack that lay atop it. Perhaps it would be better to just write to Georg, but— Another cough tore across his lungs, and he snatched the first sheet of paper that his fingers touched. But he needed to let someone know.

* * *

Georg had arrived home earlier than he typically did, and the day still stretched long before him. What time was it? He looked to his watch, just marking a few minutes past four in the afternoon. Only a few of the children might be home by now: Kurt certainly still had a few classes to finish at the university, his daughters walked home on their own—though Brigitta and Marta often came together from the city's senior high school—and his two youngest sons would still be at home with their mother, so perhaps only two or three would be in the house—and that would mean that the house would be quiet. Or quieter than usual.

Pushing open the door into the kitchen, the center of the home's life, he was struck by the silence within, a silence that had been rare in his life as a man. In the first portion of his life with Agathe, and then after his children were returned to him, and finally in this new life he lived, with Sabina, children were always about. Even when they were quieter, the noise that followed in the wake of all children no matter their temperament was enough to wake the dead, even if it were just his older children talking over an after school snack or something to drink. So then none of the children were about yet, an unusual circumstance for his family at any time. Well, Eric might be asleep, taking his afternoon nap, and if Christopher were not in the house, then he was surely with another of the families that lived nearby, playing with one of several boys his own age.

When the children were no longer in the house or playing games, Sabina often listened to the radio—one of the nearby stations broadcast a swing music that she had grown fond of, an affection for which Georg often teased her—but even that was silent this afternoon. The door dropped closed behind him with a clank he had not expected, the simple slap louder than he had anticipated in the quiet house. The kitchen was as ordered as ever, the morning's newspaper sitting atop the sideboard beside the day's mail, a small stack that looked to consist mostly of bills; he let them be and went into the hall, looking for his wife.

Just the day's own light filtered through the windows of most of the rooms, but the den was dark, the drapes pulled across the large windows to block out the sun. Most often, Sabina opened them once the morning sun began to shine, and with the middle of the spring already upon them, mid-May in fact, she threw them apart the moment that she was downstairs. If he were the first downstairs, then Georg did so.

In the shadowed room, it was difficult to see much of anything beyond the general forms of the furniture, but on one of the chairs, Georg had a glimpse of a figure, just sitting. Sabina, then, perhaps having drawn the curtains so that she might rest. He held back a smile, not certain why; it was not often that he had a moment to see his wife this way, just resting without anything to trouble her. Whatever he brought to the household with his work, it was Sabina who did the greatest portion of the tasks that kept the home running well. He did not thank her often enough for any of those duties that each of them accepted without thought, labor that she gave willingly out of her love for them all.

Lightening his footsteps, he went into the room, every drop of his shoes louder than he wished on the wooden floor, but Sabina was not a light sleeper; when their two sons had been just infants, he had woken to their cries more often than she. It was a touch that awakened Sabina swiftly, another fact that he teased his wife about, with quietly whispered words that reddened her face more than her skin seemed to allow. Agathe had always woken easily to simple noise, but Sabina was different in that respect, just as she was different in every other that he could think of. But it seemed better that way and certainly awakened fewer memories, though if things had turned out otherwise, how would he have known? He would have simply known what he had, both in the present and the past.

He just stood behind his wife for a moment, her form clearer the longer he stood in the dark. The dark hair that he twisted around his finger into tiny ringlets was brushing her shoulder as she leaned against the chair back, and her dress was a muted shade indiscernible from the rest of the darkness. She shifted in the chair, turning her head to one side, and a mass of her dark waves dropped over her shoulder. His eyes were well enough adjusted to the darkness that her profile, the sharp nose and soft line of her lips, were obvious in the darkness.

His hand was out already, and he just stroked the few strands of hair that were draped over the chair's back; each wave was soft as the silk he remembered that had filled his home in Austria, but he would give up everything that he had abandoned there to have all of this moment once again. Sight unseen, the choice was a difficult one, but if one only knew what it was that lay ahead in America, there was no choice between the two futures he might have had.

In the chair, Sabina moved again, and now Georg moved his hand to her cheek, to the cool skin of her face that almost rose to meet his touch. His wife was beautiful, Georg reminded himself yet again, as he did whenever he saw her, and had a heart to more than match her visage. Leaning down, he pressed his lips to where his fingers had touched, just lightly against her. _I do not deserve her._

"Mmm?" The sound from her throat was hardly anything but quiet moan, as though she were just beginning to wake. Pulling away a bit, he combed the splayed fingers of a hand through a larger bit of her hair, wanting to simply feel those light, loose locks run along his skin. It would just be a few moments until she was truly awake and looked up at him—

And there were her eyes, bright and shining blue even in the darkness for a moment until she squinted to see him. "Georg?" she asked, her voice still thick with sleep.

"Of course," he said quietly, bending down again and this time kissing her mouth tenderly.

"You're home early," she said once he straightened his back, and Georg shook his head at the guilt he heard just tinging her words.

"Yes," he said with a wave of his hand. "I had no reason to remain in town and every reason to hasten home." If the drapes were open, he knew his wife's cheeks would be covered by a faint pink, but he only smiled. "And I am glad to find you resting."

"I should be starting dinner—" She began to stand, but Georg dropped a palm onto her shoulder, holding her in the chair gently.

"It can wait." The only thoughts that Sabina had were of others, he knew, and she sometimes needed to be reminded to consider herself. "The children will be fine whenever they come home." He looked up for a moment. Given the time, Eric might have been ready to be brought up from his nap. "But where are Eric and Christopher?"

"Upstairs," Sabina said, still trying to work her way out from beneath her husband's hand.

"Both of them?" Georg felt his eyebrows rise in surprise. "Christopher is far more quiet than I thought possible."

"He tired himself out running around outside a few hours ago. They're both just napping."

"It looks like he ran you ragged as well, love."

"No," she said, "I'm fine, Georg—"

"I believe what you meant to say, Sabina," Georg said, pressing a finger to her mouth, "is that you need something to revive yourself." He was smiling, and could not help it. "And that you would like to just have a cup of tea in the kitchen. Just for yourself." He just had a glimpse of that blush on her face another time, and he touched her cheeks lightly. "And without any further protests." Circling around her chair, he held out his hand to her, and she took it without another word, pulling herself up, but he barely felt the weight of her body pulling on his arm, she was so light.

Her fingers were cold in his own warmer grasp as they went into the kitchen, not speaking but just touching, one hand in another with their shoulders pressed together. As they reached the tile of the kitchen's threshold, she loosened her hand—no doubt she meant to prepare her own tea—but he tightened his own. "You just sit," he said, leaning to kiss her cheek again. "Let me bring your tea."

After the time it took him to prepare that single cup for her, Georg was certain that his wife had at least had a few moments of amusement, just watching him clumsily fill the tea kettle—typically, she had boiling water for her own tea that he used as well, and she was nearly an expert at filling that kettle—splashing water about, then searching for where her tea bags were. He knew where the coffee that he drank was stored, but he was utterly unfamiliar with her tea, preferring the fuller body of the coffee. The kettle whistled after a few minutes, during which he had taken out his coffee and two cups.

Dropping a tea bag into one, Georg poured the hot water from the kettle over it, the liquid immediately a pale and then a darker red, already colored by the tea. Eschewing his own cup, he brought the cup to his wife, who wrapped her hands around the warm cup immediately, just letting the tea bag sit for a moment. In Austria, whenever he had seen tea consumed, Georg had seen loose tea leaves used, but for the moment, tea leaves were a luxury the family did not have.

At the stove top again, Georg filled his cup with the boiling water, then immediately turned the burner off. Opening one of the drawers beside the stove, he pulled a spoon out, just enough to add a teaspoon or a bit more of the coffee to the water. Freshly brewed coffee was something he had not tasted for sometime as well, but it could not be helped for the moment. Prying back the lid of the container, he spooned in a bit of coffee, swirling it around in the water that immediately blackened, just a bit of a light tan foam twisting on the surface in a tiny whirlpool that followed along the length of the spoon. Letting the spoon fall against the side of the cup, he replaced the lid on the cannister, then took his own mug to join his wife at the kitchen table; the box of tea bags and the cannister of coffee would still be sitting there when the children were home and awake, filling the home with noise again, when this quiet, solitary time with Sabina was lost.

They just sat there, Georg next to his wife rather than across from her, only wanting to be near her. Neither of them spoke, but simply sat, being with one another for so long as time would allow. The words could wait for whenever the children were creating noise of their own. Strange, really, that it was in these silent moments that he felt the closest to the woman on earth he loved the most, and that it was with words rather than just the knowledge of his soul that he made the pledges that he had spoken. In these quiet, gentle moments and seconds, so rare in their home, he was nearer to Sabina than when the air was filled with even the most well meaning chatter.

Still and silent, simply letting their shoulders touch now, the minutes ticked away, until Georg had a glimpse of his watch as he lifted his mug—nearly a quarter of five. Pushing his chair back with a loud scraping along the tile that startled himself as well as his wife due to the noise and stood, crossing the kitchen with a few quick strides to the sideboard where that stack of thin envelopes lay. Scooping them up in one hand, he turned back to the table. This small separation from his wife, it was too much even now.

Settling back into his chair, Georg began to flip through the letters as Sabina just sipped her tea. Most of the letters were indeed bills, for those simple necessities that one could not do without. During the war, though, they had learned that they could live without quite a lot, but such things as paying for the electricity, for their home—those were unavoidable. In the middle of the stack, though...

Georg's mouth curled in a smile in spite of himself, looking at the name scrawled with the return address: Gunter Hanl.

"Is something funny?" his wife asked, and he just touched her arm lightly as he shook his head.

"No, only something I had not expected." He turned the front of the envelope toward her; if it had been anything more than just the address, she would have been lost in a language that she could not understand.

"Another letter from your friend?" Sabina asked. She endured the smell of her husband's coffee, but she rarely touched it herself, preferring to take tea. Both had been scarce throughout the war and were still difficult to find now, but little by little, she was able to find such things at the market, a fact that she knew Georg appreciated just as much as herself. The tea was not quite piping hot but now quite warm, just as she preferred it to be.

"Yes," Georg said, slipping a finger under the edge of the envelope and ripping across the very top. He had had only that single letter in response to his own from Gunter, and whatever it was that the letter contained, certainly some news was better than nothing. Tugging the page from the ragged opening across the envelope, he opened the page.

"Does he have any news about the rebuilding in Austria?" Sabina did not ask the question for herself, but for her husband. Whenever the reports of Europe came across the radio or in the newspaper, they centered upon the Soviet threat or the destruction that still filled the continent, and it was in those moments that she saw her husband despair. She was not eager to see Austria for herself, but for him, and if she needed to remind him daily that Austria would be a beacon for the world again one day or another, she would.

"I don't think so," he said, reaching his hand out for his coffee mug. Gunter's greeting seemed rather hasty, like he had not even spent a moment to put together the salutation that one used for a friend. _Georg, _it began, _I don't know how long it will take for this letter to reach you..._

He had three fingers around the handle, but he did not lift the cup; Georg did not even feel his hand on the ceramic, nor the heat that came through that heavy material. "Is something wrong?" The voice was familiar, but it was far away, like a poor connection over the telephone. His ears were ringing and his face was hot. "Georg? Georg?" It was louder with the second call of his name, and another's hand touched his.

Georg tore his eyes from the letter, already feeling the weight and terror of what he had just read on him. "It's Max," he said hoarsely.

"Your other friend?" Sabina's face was lined with her new worry. "Georg, what is wrong?"

"It's Max," he said again. "He—" Oh, God, he couldn't say it! All he could do was hold it out to his wife, and let her see it for herself, but he could still hear those words ringing in his mind. _Georg, I don't know how long it will take for this letter to reach you, but I need to let you know. Max had gotten in touch with you once I know, but I know that you cannot be aware of this, for there is just no way for you to be aware. Max has died, Georg._

"Oh, Georg," Sabina said softly, "I'm so sorry." He didn't want to hear it, but his body was too heavy to even shake his head or wave her words away. And with this, there was only one thing that he had to do.

"I'll have to go," he said, and her only answer was a rush of breath that she could not have meant to be nearly so loud as it was. _Max has died, Georg. The conditions in Salzburg have improved, but when he first took ill, they were not good. It was consumption._

"No, Georg, please—"

"Sabina," Georg said in a low voice—why on earth did he, when no other person but his wife was around to hear his words?—"there is no more time. Even if it is just—just to see—" He was choking on the syllables already. God, how could this be?

"I know you must have been close to him, Georg, but Europe is still in ruins."

"Close is not even the right word!" he snapped. All it had taken was that letter, and the nearness, the intimacy with his wife had been snatched away. He needed it more than ever now; yes it _was_ a need, not a matter of desire, but one of need. "Max was the greatest friend that I had in Austria, and my closest friend near as long as I can remember!" Why had he wished to be so close to her as he was now? She did not comprehend this, and Christ, she didn't seem to even try!

"He is already dead, Georg, and his funeral must have been weeks ago—if you just look at the postmark—"

"That is not what this is about!" Damn her, didn't she understand? Sever her ties to every person she knew, renew them for just a moment and then snap them forever! Perhaps _then_ she would realize this pain! One more person that he would never see again, a man he had counted as his dearest friend from such a young age that he never remembered life without him! All he wanted was to remember him one last time in Austria.

"Then what is it about?" she asked softly, pushing her cup away.

"He—" There went his words again, swallowed by a throat that would not open. His eyes were burning hot, almost painfully, as he struggled against the tears that went with that pain. He rubbed them away, but more came, streaming onto his face before he could brush them aside. God damn it, would Austria leave him anything? It had stolen his wife, the love of his country, his closest friend, the sense of a home—and _her_. Everything and everyone he loved, his homeland devoured. Sabina could never understand that as well as her parents might have, she was born in this country, and it was hers by right not by necessity—

"Shh." How had she stood? Had his mind left this kitchen and house so easily that he had not even heard her stand? Behind him, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, just being near to him. How did his face become so wet so quickly, as if those tears meant to quench the rage that had seized him. It faded as quickly as it rose, as suddenly cold and dead as suddenly as it had been white-hot. "If you must go, Georg," she went on quietly, her voice nearer than he had expected, almost beside his ear, "then you must."

He covered her hands with his own, rubbing his thumbs over her wrists. Oh by heaven, he did not deserve to even know this woman, let alone be married to her. How could she even love him as she said she did? "Come with me," he said just as quietly as she had. Yes, if he had to go to Austria, then she could come with him, and see that last part of what was him that she had to see, finally know him fully.

"Of course." If he needed her to be there with him, then she would be.

"Christopher and Eric will have to stay with Liesl," Georg said, clearing his throat but not moving from his wife's embrace.

"Do you think that Kurt and the girls will be fine on their own?" Sabina asked.

"No," Georg said firmly with a shake of his head, "they will come with us."

"Georg, they're too young to go back—"

"They deserve to be there." He had to speak calmly, not shout angrily as he had before. Not to this wonderful, beautiful woman who loved this ass that _he_ was. _Never_ at Sabina. "Do you believe that they loved Max any less than I did?" Pushing his chair back little by little—Sabina stepped away, releasing her hold on him—he stood, and turned around to her, already certain that his eyes were still wet and red. "Sabina, they called him their uncle." He reached one hand out to her arm and pulled her close to him, burying his face in her hair. "He was nearly a part of our family."

Sabina's own eyes were burning as she clutched her husband to her. How could he think that he needed to ask such things of her? His own children, he had every right to say where they went. "Please, Sabina," she heard him whisper.

"They're your children," she said, stroking a finger across his shoulders, just wanting to comfort him. "They will go wherever you wish."

"_Our_ children." The first word was firm, certain. "Never forget that, Sabina. Our children. You are their mother as much as I am their father."

"If you wish to take them with you," Sabina said, "then we will take them."

"Thank you," he whispered, brushing a hand in her hair, wanting to kiss her, but he just had to stand there, feel her against him. Were there a few voices outside the door? God, he needed to find the words to reveal this pain.

"...until the end of the year," one of the girls was saying. His ears felt full of cotton, and whoever it was who had spoken was far away. All he knew was his wife, and just standing here with her, the incomprehensible sounds of the girls' voices just flowing around the two of them. His mouth was dry, and his throat was raw, and he did not know if he feared seeing the confusion and then the despair on the faces of their daughters or speaking the terror Gunter had sent.

Just standing there with his wife, the sounds of Brigitta, Marta, and Gretl's conversation dropping into silence, no words for his children came.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

**July 1946 **

The journey was easy enough, the Atlantic crossing as smooth as the going had been all those years before. A glassy sea had been beneath the ship's hull, smooth and perfect until the waves broke on the shining walls of the bow. After that almost unbelievable letter—and sometimes while journeying ever closer to his homeland, Georg had still not understood why he was returning, for how could this be the truth?—he had struggled to put everything together, arranging travel to a nation still under military occupation, hoping the subsequent letters he penned were not tossed aside or lost in the postal service.

But somehow, everything had proceeded just as he had planned, though he hoped to never have to do such a thing again. It felt like planning to journey through an active war zone, not a recovering one! And perhaps Sabina had been right in her first thought to leave the children. Passing through the myriad of checks to enter the city of Salzburg, the place where they had spent those first and most beloved years of their lives, had torn him apart; how much heavier might it be on them?

It felt like every few minutes, he said something kind to his wife, thanking her that she had come with him, or reassuring her that the destruction that still reigned was not the glory of Austria. She had never left the United States, a country that her parents, themselves immigrants just as he was, had raised her to love and respect just as he had been brought up to hold Austria in his own heart. In the future, when Austria was beautiful again, as it would be someday, he would come here with her again, show her the Mirabell Gardens, the city's cathedral, take her to every wondrous place that was in this beloved city.

Sabina was uncomfortable in this place, he could see, and she had come only to be with him; he loved her even more for that, if it was possible. But she was pale, strange in the sunlight, but just as strange was how cold the air was this morning. The summer had overrun spring, yet the morning was still frozen, as though the icy dew was hidden beneath the pliable grass bending beneath his shoes. Something, Georg decided, he needed to do something for his wife when they returned to Vermont. What he was not certain, but some kindness to repay hers, to show his gratitude. This was not her sadness, but she had come because it was _his_, still weighing on his heart.

When she had first seen the destruction of Salzburg, hardly able to understand the despair in her husband and children, Georg had wanted to undo everything he had that had brought her here. But that would not have happened, he knew; she had come of her own choice, to just be his comfort. Seeing that, he loved her all the more.

He did not know what the children thought of Salzburg now, with its streets twisting in ways that they did not know and their most familiar places gone. At times, even he had did not know what he made of it all. All he knew was where he was now, looking over the headstones in the city's cemetery. Sabina stood beside him, and behind him, his children, the four that he had known should accompany them. He had sent word to Liesl, Friedrich, and Louisa as soon as he had been able, but none of them had been able to make such a journey; that Liesl had been unable to do so he had expected and been somewhat pleased to know, as Eric and Christopher were now staying with herself, her husband, and child, but he was a bit disappointed that Louisa and Friedrich were still in the United States. Louisa in particular, somehow.

Simply looking down to the small stone that marked his friend's resting place, Georg felt lost, like he was just drifting along with nothing beneath him. All he had for support was his wife and his children; everything else, from friends to the earth itself, had been ripped away. What had Gunter said Max had succumbed to, consumption? God, it didn't matter one bit, did it? No matter how beautiful and wonderful Austria was in his memory, why had he come back, to convince himself that this place would one day be so beautiful as it had been? There was nothing left in Austria for him.

Behind her parents, Brigitta was cold as she stood motionless. Not only was her body stiff with that cold despite the summer sun, but _she_ was cold, almost not feeling a thing. She was not...angry with her uncle—no, that was impossible, not when she had only to think of him from all those years ago to have a smile wanting to break through her staid face—but almost disappointed, as though she was missing something. She had needed to know what he had meant to say with that strange letter he had sent, yet she had had no answer from him. Had he even received her own, or had he been buried when it had even reached Austria? But whatever she had been asking after, she could never know; Uncle Max's knowledge and words had died with him.

Something scratched at the back of her leg, bringing her out of her dark mood for a moment; it touched just below where the hem of her skirt brushed her knee, and the temptation to bend down to scratch at it—probably some sort of a biting insect—nearly overcame her. What would Uncle Max be thinking if he saw them all now, she wondered, standing around his gravestone too afraid to move to even scratch at a maddening itch, she wondered. Probably that they were all fools, although his words might not be so kind. Nothing could be the same now in Austria, like the last constant had vanished.

Brigitta no longer knew Austria, she realized that now. Glancing to her father, she winced just at the sight of him. The age that had come over him that evening so many months ago when she had seen him in the den had not left him, and if anything it seemed worse here, as if the time that had passed in the United States had run its course upon him again in Austria simply because he stepped onto its soil. Did he have anything left in this place? Brigitta did not know, and she could not think of a way to ask that. No matter, though, for Austria was no longer her father's country. Too much of what he had and loved was in America, and could never be a part of what Austria had been for him, or what it was now.

She had to desperately try to not look to her mother.

* * *

"I thank you for coming," Gunter said, hardly anything in his words beside the syllables.

"Of course," Georg said. His answer was just as dry, not because he did not care, for he certainly did; how else would he and his family have escaped from Austria if not for Gunter? But there was too much here at this moment, feeling even deeper than before the loss of his friend, and being here, sensing and _knowing_ for the first time really the pain of the loss of his country. Austria could never be his again. Sitting beside his wife on the bench in one of the three small rooms that were his family's for this time, he took her hand, squeezing her fingers. He tightened his grip on her, and he almost could not feel his own hand; he had to feel her, though, needing to just touch her.

Just where Gunter lived at the moment, he did not really know. They only had this small place because of their status as American residents, and Sabina as a citizen; at least the American occupation of the city had a positive aspect, even if he wished that those people who had once been his neighbors and countrymen might be allowed to rebuild their city as they wished.

"There was not much that he had," Gunter said quietly, just holding out the stack of papers for Georg. "No one really has too much at this point."

"Of course," he said quietly, just taking the pages his friend offered him. "But...I thank you for these."

"There is no need for thanks," Gunter went on. "Max wished for you to have them. I'm not certain what they are, you understand."

"Yes."

"I have not looked through them, no more than to be certain that he did not put one of his bills in there for you to settle."

It had been several weeks since Georg had smiled, but that was enough to draw his mouth upwards. "That is something Max might have done," he said quietly. Beside him, he felt Sabina move closer to him. Thinking of Max and bills, another memory lurched into his thoughts, of that puppet theater that Max had found for the children, and the bill for which his friend had sent to him. "Perhaps you have a grander theater, Gretl," he said, and glancing to his youngest daughter, he saw her smile, a bit bemused though. Her memories of Austria and Max were certainly blurred, but everything she must remember was pleasant, he knew, where Max was concerned.

"The summer before—we left," he said turning toward Sabina, "Max found a puppet theater for the children. I'm not certain how many productions they managed to stage."

"He sounds to have been a wonderful man," Sabina said just as softly.

"He was. And always attempting to persuade me to enter the children into different contests."

Sabina only laughed to herself as she looked out toward the children; they simply sat, quiet. "I'm sure they would have been marvelous," she said. Georg shook his head slightly. A situation like that might have been their way out of Austria—and away from this woman at his side. That was enough to settle any regretful thoughts about his choice all those years before.

Flipping through the various pages, Georg knew that what Max had set aside for him was nothing too special by the standards of most. Old letters that they had sent to one another, even a few photographs—even one of the children giving one of those ludicrous puppet shows. Who had it been who had concocted that one, Brigitta and Friedrich? He glanced to his daughter; she sat across the small sitting room beside the window, simply looking out onto the street below.

She had been listless in the past few months, most of his children had, but it was more pronounced in that girl. Nineteen years old now, and moping about like a child! More than once he had thought to approach her and simply ask what was so troubling to her, but he could not bring himself to do so. If any person were to attempt it, then it ought to be his wife, or perhaps even Liesl. It was one of these moments in which Brigitta resembled Louisa in all the ways he wished she did not. This was not the time to worry about it, not when he already had enough to trouble his mind, so much of it sitting in between his palms.

But everything in this pile of papers was something more than just the papers that were in his hand: they were the last traces he had of his friend. Georg shifted another of the pages, a clipped newspaper article that had been presented to the paper by the Nazis, requesting information on his family's location. A few weeks after they had gone. _Why the time? _Georg wondered, just skimming the text. The Axis had always been thorough and quick, but now they had endured such a delay? He just shook his head, passing the ragged paper to Sabina. Her spoken German was improving with each day they spent in the city, but her ability to read his mother tongue was still far from perfect. Every morning, though, she sat beside him, reading what she could from anything he found that had German written on it. But she could certainly pick out enough of those words to make some sense of it.

The next in the stack was not a paper, but the back of a sealed envelope. Damn it all, he was growing sick of all these bloody letters. Turning one corner up, he slipped a finger beneath the slightly raised flap, ripping across the first bit. "Georg," Sabina said, her voice louder than he expected.

"Yes?" he asked, looking up.

"Don't open that."

"Why not?" he asked, his eyebrows dipping together in confusion. "Max will not complain if I open some bill that he neglected—"

"It's not addressed to you," she whispered, covering his hand with her palm. She tugged his fingers away from the envelope, enclosing his hand with hers, just as he had done a few minutes before. Why did she appear so withdrawn, almost as though she were expecting anger from him. Curious, concerned even, he turned it over entirely, looking to the addressee that his wife had seen from where she sat beside him.

_Brigitta von Trapp._

Georg's mouth was dry as he read that name again, Brigitta von Trapp. He turned the letter again, looking to the back, almost expecting a seal that he had not seen before. On the ground, Gretl peered at the papers, craning her neck to have a proper look at the name. "Brigitta von..." The first bit of the name escaped her mouth before she thought better, and the latter part faded to silence as she looked to her sister, confused. Just as many questions as were in Gretl's face raced around Georg's mind: how, why, when. More importantly, though, why had she _not_ told him what she had done? That was certainly the root of this, that Brigitta had sent something to Max, probably a short letter. Then again, _why_?

Her father, mother, brother, and sisters were all looking to her, and beneath their raking eyes, Brigitta swallowed harshly, ashamed of the confusion on every face. Between Gretl and Kurt on the floor—the bench on which her parents sat was too short to accommodate any others—she wanted to just curl up, withdraw until no other person might see her. Even now, she looked down to the wooden floor; why did the gaze of her father's friend feel so withering as well she wondered, twisting a handful of her dark hair. Her palm was wet, soaking the strands in a few moments.

Oh, god, why had she written to him? She had never imagined that something—something like _this_ might happen...but then it was always what she never thought of that haunted her, whether it was from the small fibs she had told as a child to the books that she let lie around once she had read them two or three times. But if she had not done as she did, she would have just wondered until she had, Brigitta reminded herself as her father began to go through those remaining papers. She still couldn't look up to him, but she heard those flutterings of one page against another. Lifting her eyes—just for a moment, not so that he could see her face—Brigitta bit her lip. She knew the resolve that she had just glimpsed on her father's face: he meant to speak to her alone concerning this, not before her siblings, perhaps not even before Sabina! Instead, he had handed the still unopened envelope to her mother, who just held it on her lap, not even touching it with more than a finger or two, and continued to look through what remained of the papers his friend had collected.

In that moment, watching Sabina, Brigitta had never felt so far from the woman who had raised her from twelve—or was it thirteen?—to this point. Sabina knew nothing of Maria, and was nothing like Fräulein Maria—how could she just let that sit in her hands, like it was only a friendly greeting? The anger was boiling in her before she knew to shove it aside, and Brigitta looked down again, not even turning to her siblings, a rush of shame beside that anger. Sabina had been nothing but kind to her in all the years that she had known her, but...she was not Fräulein Maria.

Sooner or later, Brigitta told herself, she would know. If she had passed these months without knowing this, then she certainly had the will to endure another few minutes or hours. But being so near to this answer...She just needed to know!


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Dinner that evening was simple: in spite of the season and the new summer heat that hung over Salzburg, clinging to everyone like a lingering bout of influenza, they had been served a thick soup that tasted of nothing and everything, paired with a hard bread, perhaps a crusty loaf that had sat in the cook's pantry a week too long. Certainly it was more than some in Salzburg had, and none of the family complained. Gunter had returned to his small room somewhere in the city despite Georg's repeated protests that he remain. Besides all of that, the hotel's kitchen had managed to procure clean water, and for that, no member of his family complained.

Somehow, it had been more pleasant, though, just the family around the table, some eating and talking quietly. Three though, were simply silent. Sabina was as quiet as she had been for most of the time in Austria, pale and only picking at her meal, pushing most of the broth and roots in her soup around her bowl and simply nibbling at her bread. In the end, she offered her bowl to Gretl who, in spite of her slender body, possessed a voracious appetite that might have matched that which Kurt had possessed a few years previously. And while they both ate with relish, Brigitta and Georg did not speak, glancing to one another only occasionally, then looking away in a moment. Even as the meal wound to its conclusion—a small tart that Georg sliced into sections that were smaller yet for each member of his family, though Sabina declined a portion—both wanted to be done with it all. As much as he wanted to ask his daughter what this had been all about, Georg wasn't quite sure that he could.

Eventually, though, the meal ended, and the small group broke apart, most of the children retreating to their room at one side of the sitting area—Kurt had grudgingly agreed to stay in same room as his sisters, for economy's sake—and Sabina to the room that was hers and Georg's. It did not surprise him too terribly; Austria did not seem to be agreeing with her, but the extent of it was surprising. He had known that she was coming just to be with him and had been grateful, yet she had almost...wilted beneath the summer skies. Perhaps it might have been better if she had remained in Vermont with their sons—

"Father?" Brigitta pulled him out of his thoughts.

"Yes, Brigitta?" He stood to one side of the room, before the small hearth that was the center of that sitting room, just as it was the center of the den in their Vermont home. And she was across the room, just outside of the room where her siblings were. Why was she still up, he wondered for a moment, rather than with her brother and sisters— And he was right back to his confusion over that letter as he remembered what had transpired that afternoon. Could she mean to have anything else than what was hers? He did not want to be angry with his daughter, but God help him, anger was what crept into him with that remembrance.

"May I have my letter from Uncle Max, Father?" The words were quiet and almost timid, as though she was afraid to ask him for what was meant to be seen only by her, unless she chose to share it. That was the meaning of addressing a letter, else Max would simply have written that to the whole of his family.

Georg had to take a moment to think of the words he wanted. "Why did you do what you did?" he asked. Just standing there, his daughter was silent, looking down to the floor, almost like she meant to hide her face. "Brigitta, why did you write to him?" What would she do if he reached out to touch her, if he tried to say with his hand, with an embrace what escaped his words? If he did not mistake her posture, she would step away before he could. True, even in those few hours since this had come to him, he had not directly asked her about this until now, but there was no doubt that she had written to him. Else, another letter would have come to him, not to his daughter.

"I—I—" Brigitta bit back her tongue. Had her father decided what she had, that all Max could have been so worried over was Fräulein Maria? "I wanted to ask him if he knew anything about—a friend," she blurted out, wanting immediately to pull the words back, to slow them down. Her father just narrowed his eyes as he thrust a hand into his pocket. Yes, perhaps he believed it, she thought; he _had_ to. And it wasn't really a lie, was it?

"Someone you remembered from school?" he asked, bringing the now battered letter out. The corners bent in, and the spot along the edge where he had begun to slice open the top was ragged. He had to turn it over again, to see her name written across the front. _Brigitta von Trapp_, written in response to whatever she must have sent to him.

"Yes," Brigitta whispered, and she reached out for the letter with a shaking hand; when she had first written all those months ago, she had never really considered the possibility of a real response, just as she had not thought he might be gone from the world before he had a chance to send his reply. Would it have been better to have an answer at all?

No. She knew the answer to her own question in just a moment's thought. This was here, and her father extended it out to her, a mix of confusion, curiosity, and even anger straining his face.

"I—I'm sorry, Father," she stammered. As meek as the words were, she snatched the packet away. Somehow, even knowing what she had, she did not want to open it before her father. What would be his next thought, to ask what her uncle had to say? Oh, please, she wanted to implore her father, not that!

Georg was not certain what he wished to do next, and the indecision was all the more embarrassing before his child, and the ignorance that her actions meant in himself. It stoked that anger as well as almost anything else he ever remembered. When had she done this? Months ago, and he had not even known! "Will you be opening that here," he asked gruffly, "or will that be another thing you do in secret?" His daughter's gaze narrowed as she tightened her hand around the envelope, her mouth pursing with the same anger he felt.

_"It's mine from Uncle Max!" _Brigitta wanted to yell, but she just bit her lip. Shouting at her father—not just disagreeing with him, but truly shouting at him—would not help the matter. Whatever she had wanted in her life, the people she had wished for in her family, all that had been destroyed when he had taken them from Austria so quickly after it had begun to change. And now he had brought them to this place again, but in a way that was just...too different to truly think about.

Slipping her finger into the small slash in the paper that her father had already made, Brigitta slit the rest of the envelope open across the top. It was just a single sheet of paper inside that she plucked out, folded and covered in Uncle Max's handwriting, small, cramped, and almost rushed when she remembered how his first letter appeared. Peeling the folded halves apart, Brigitta wondered for a moment if her father heard her heart pounding in her chest as clearly as she sensed it in her own ears. She glanced up to him for a moment, but he was just standing there. Did he expect her to read it aloud? Perhaps, but she couldn't, not just yet; it had come to her, and for this first time that her eyes had it, she needed to read it, just for herself. Drawing in a breath to find her courage, she let her eyes scan across the first of the lines. A few dark smears touched the page, but she looked away from those. If her uncle had died of consumption, then—no, it was better to only read what was there and certain.

_My dear Brigitta,_

_you must understand that I had no idea that this might happen. I am not certain what your father would have to say about this, but if you wish to know, then I will tell you. I must only ask that you forgive me, my child._

_I remember how well you loved your governess, Fräulein Maria you called her. Brigitta, when your family first left Austria, there was nothing Herr Zeller wished for more than to know where it was that your father had gone. I knew enough of what they would do to hide myself, but your little Fräulein, she did not know to do so. There was nothing that I was able to do. All I know is what I discovered after it all ended, what I was told._

_I'm not sure how I should best tell you this, except to __tell__ you. She died, Brigitta. There is nothing more for me to say but that. There is a notation that she was taken into the custody of Herr Zeller for interrogation, and that all attempts were unsuccessful. I might be able to tell you more, but I cannot bear to; all you need to know is that._

_I had tried to send you an impression of her headstone, but it seems that it was damaged during the time it took to cross the Atlantic Ocean. I say her headstone, Brigitta, but it is more a memorial. I do not know what happened afterward, but she disappeared from even their records. I know nothing more, not of what became of her except that she died in their custody. I could not leave her without a place to be remembered, and so there is now a marker for her in the cemetery of the church and abbey. That is what I attempted to send a rubbing of._

_If you will tell your father, then that is your decision. From what you had to say, I believe your father has rebuilt whatever he can, or remade it. I do not know what knowing this might do to him, and so that choice is with you. I hope that you have more wisdom than I._

_Yours,_

_Uncle Max_

Brigitta had never hoped to be more wrong than she found herself wanting to be now. Again and again, her eyes ran over that line, needing to see it time and again, almost hearing Uncle Max speak the words: _she died_. How could that be possible, let alone right? Had whomever Max had discovered this from been lying— No, she already knew that was not possible, for Max had sources of information that she did not understand. _I might be able to tell you more, but I cannot bear to._ What was so terrible that he could not say anything beyond?

Her mind had begun to spin with the possibilities already, of one horrid fate for Fräulein Maria after another, each worse than the one that proceeded it. No matter what she imagined, all that Brigitta was left with was that this was the truth. Maria was gone, and that knowledge left her as empty as the news of her mother's death. But it was as though she had gone through that all over again, except for the bitter cold that gripped her anew.

"Brigitta?" Was it on her face already? Lifting her eyes, she caught the concern that was coming over her father's face quicker than he could hold it back. "Brigitta, what is wrong?" Her mouth was completely dry, like she had had nothing to drink for days on end.

"I—" No, how could she say this to him?

"What did Max know concerning your friend?" He reached a hand out to her shoulder, just touching her gently. Her breath had become a shudder. His hand was tighter, almost a vice, but warm. "Please, Brigitta."

She couldn't force her mouth to form those words, to say that Maria had died. And how could she tell him what was between Max's words, that she had died because they had done nothing to protect her or to take her with them when they had left. And at the hand of the Nazis who had destroyed Austria..."My friend," she managed, still not able to meet his gaze. "She—she died in—one of the bombing raids." Her eyes were already filled with tears, but she rubbed the back of her hand against her face anyway. It wasn't entirely false, anyhow. Fräulein Maria had been her friend—and the bombing raids that had decimated Salzburg, they were as much the responsibility of the Nazis as whatever they had done to her governess!

Even as she scrubbed at her eyes again, her father caught her hand. "Don't, Brigitta," he said quietly, drawing her close to him and just holding her. His words almost drew her attention, slipping from the English that she had become accustomed to hearing his voice to the German that she remembered, and with that tongue was a memory of something just as terrible as what she could not tell him. _"Liesl saw you loved her."_ _Oh god, _she wanted to say, _not that._ But her words were frozen in her throat, caught in the overwhelming chill that consumed her, and all she could do was stand, and listen. "Cry if you need to."

"I don't," she began, but the words were filled with sobs that she could not hold back. _Fräulein Maria,_ she wanted to say, and with only that thought, every memory of her governess was new and fresh, suddenly raw. Her father tightened his hold on her, whispering some small comfort that she could not understand, not even hear through the cotton that suddenly filled her ears.

Lying to her father nows felt far different than any other falsehood she had ever spoken, whether to him or not, as though in betraying the trust he had put in her by holding back this piece of knowledge utterly destroyed the bond that her nineteen years of life with him had forged. Like it had never existed in the first place. As warm as his hold on her was, rubbing a hand up and down her back against the wail breaking through her tightened throat to be muted against his chest, just as he had when she was just a child, it was almost like she did not know him, in spite of all the memories. But she could not share this with him; it would destroy him in moments. Brigitta could not bear to see that again.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

"Georg?" Sabina hardly heard her husband enter, his steps seemed so quiet and reserved this day, but she knew she had caught the sound of something. Even in the sleep that was just beginning to elude her, she was certain that it must be him.

"Did I wake you?" he asked. With his voice, she was able to find him even in the dark, that blacker spot of his shadow against the dusk that filtered in through the window of their room. She had lain down as soon as she had found the energy to change into her nightdress, just a simple cotton shift that was too cold even for the summer, so she had drawn up the sheets and even unfurled the heavy quilt that had been placed in the bottom of their wardrobe, perhaps forgotten from the winter. Beneath both of those, she was still chilled.

"No," she said. In spite of how tired she was, she had not been able to sleep, just laying there beneath the insufficient heat of the layers atop her thin frame. No matter how still she lay with her eyes closed, she remained awake. Did he mean to say something else? She wasn't certain, but he just sighed as he left the door, and Sabina propped herself up on her elbows, bumps running across her skin where the heavy quilt fell away. "Is something wrong, Georg?"

"It's Brigitta," he said quietly, the sound of his voice closer now, just a few feet away from the side of the bed that was his. Sabina had nearly expected so much after the silence that had overcome her daughter during the last bit of the evening, as though she were at a funeral. It was the same sort of somber mood she remembered from those few she had been to in her own life, a number that she did not wish to increase any more than needed.

"Was it—what was in that letter?" What else could it be? She had seen his face when he realized just to whom that letter was meant to be given, and the expression had been one that was not only unhappy, but bordering upon anger. She did not feel that in him now, the strange knowledge of him that she always had as his wife breaking through the darkness. All she sensed from him was a heaviness that she had not seen since he had first learned of the death of his friend.

"Yes." The admission was a heavy one as Georg kicked off his shoes and pushed them aside with a foot, not caring where they landed. How was it that he was so exhausted already, when it could not be past nine in the evening? Was the day even that far gone? He couldn't be certain how long he had stood there with Brigitta, just letting her cry, holding her closer whenever he sensed her body tensing. He shook his head, not wanting to remember that as he tried to sleep; all those years before, he had found that, even if it pushed aside the final reckoning, a night of that blank, flat slumber eased the pain, as though it just dulled it.

Reaching out a hand for the sheet, he was surprised at the heaviness of the blanket that his fingers found; in the small bit of illumination that the evening dusk gave to the room, he had thought that it had just been the sheet of the bed. He shook aside the surprise and crawled beneath the layers, not bothering to change into his own nightclothes. As Georg settled himself beneath them all—Lord, he ached as if he had wept all his daughter's tears himself!—his hand brushed against his wife's arm.

He pulled away immediately. "Sabina!" he said, a bit alarmed, immediately raising his hand to her face. "You're cold as ice!" The gentle curves of her face were just as chilled as the skin of her body. "Are you unwell?"

"I'm—I'm fine," she said, but she did say anything as he pulled her to him, and she knew that he had heard the uncertainty in her voice. He was warm as always, and even beneath the long shirt, jacket, and trousers that still separated her from him, that heat spread from his flesh to hers.

God, how he had he brought her here?

Brigitta, Sabina...They both needed to be gone from this place, before anything else befell his family. His wife's breathing was quieter than typical, and Georg rubbed a hand along her back. Just a few more days, and then he would take them all out of this place.

As well as he knew this city in his memory, his beloved Salzburg, it was almost as unknown as a foreign nation to him now. Never again, he decided, just holding his wife closely, he would never bring them all here again, not if he meant to try to convince himself that this place was anything but a memory. His home could never be here; it would be wherever his wife and children were, not a spot that he could pinpoint on a map or the source of hundreds of thousands of beloved memories. However he had known that before, he knew it to his core now. Closing his eyes to the simple sound of Sabina's breaths, Georg sighed.

It was all gone, out of his reach. He knew that now. But this was his now, and he belonged to them all just as well. Their love, their forgiveness...it was all he required now. Everything that came to them, all they needed was one another.

"Georg." His wife's voice came out of the depths of the darkness that lay beyond his eyes.

"Hmm?" It was too much to even speak a proper word, feeling Brigitta's sadness even so far away. His shirt was still a bit damp with his daughter's tears—she had cried longer than he had thought possible for a girl of nineteen, so much that he wondered if she had any tears left that she might weep again in her life—but he did not care. All he had done was to comfort his daughter, to do what he had needed to, what he had once neglected.

"What was in it?" Sabina asked. He felt her cold hand on his, twisting her frigid fingers into his grasp. "Please, love."

"In what?" he asked. Anything beyond this place, holding his wife so closely, had slipped away from him. He could not even remember what it was she meant!

"What upset Brigitta so terribly?" Georg opened his eyes for a moment, and just looked at her, the profile of her face that was clearer with every moment in the lights of the night beginning to take hold outside the window, and the adjustment that he found his own eyes making. "Please," she said again, and Georg reached a hand out to her, stroking a finger along her face, shuddering at the touch of her cold skin. Yes, he could deny her nothing.

"A friend of hers," he managed after a moment's silence. His hand collapsed against her face, cupping her entire cheek, from the bone to the line of her jaw. "She had asked Max about a friend from school, and..." Well, he did not need to fill in the rest of that sentence. _He had died before posting the letter._

"From school?" Sabina asked. She did not protest her husband's touch, for it was warmer than any part of her own body, and if she had been able, she would have just allowed him to wrap himself around her completely until she was lost in him and his embrace. In this place, she knew nothing, as though she were just floating along on the surface of something she did not understand.

"Yes." Georg nodded, and as he did, he wanted to laugh. Why bother with that, when no person was there to see it? Even Sabina's sight could not be so good to see such a small movement! "I—I'm not certain just who..." And how could he be? Anything about his children's lives for such a very long time in Austria he did not know. _Never again,_ he thought another time, rubbing his palm over Sabina's cheek again. He had told himself that more times than he could count, but to remind himself of it once more was not to do ill.

"And what did she learn?" Sabina was not certain why she asked—with the weight that seemed to be over her husband, the reluctance that was in his words, and his every mannerism this evening, she knew. But Georg did not answer for a moment, as though he were looking for strength. She did not want to ask that of him; hearing so much of this was enough for her.

"Sabina, please..." He did not want to say this here, to bring what had been outside into this place of such quiet nearness with his wife. But that sense he had of her: Georg knew why she asked, that she wished for him to share anything that was his with her, be it joy or wrenching sadness. He took a deep breath. "He—Max wrote—" Georg's words were breaking, as though the remembrance of his friend's death, even so long after, was breaking under the sadness of his daughter. "He told her—"

"Shh," Sabina said, pressing a cold finger to his mouth. As much as she wished to know from his own mouth, she could not hear the pain in him, and she knew enough now. "Don't say anything else, love." Just with those words of his, the sting in them, she knew, and she did not need to hear it spoken. "Not anymore."

His eyes were brimming with tears that he did not understand, for he did not even know anything beyond the barest facts. But it ached so deeply within him to just see his daughter in such pain that all she had the heart to do was to weep. Gathering his wife to him, his arms encircling her thin frame with ease, he pressed his face to her neck, the warmth of his face and the tears just breaking from his eyes spreading a bit of heat out against her skin.

Georg just clutched her, not caring that his damp shirt pressed against her cold body or that her every limb was ice against him in spite of his own body heat. He only wanted to feel her now, here in his arms. Outside that embrace, everything else could fade away for the night, forgotten. It would strike again the next morning, just as heavily, duller but as difficult to hold himself against. He could bear it then, but not now.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

If she could have found a place to sleep in the sitting room, Brigitta knew that she would rather have just curled up there, pushing aside the final tears that slipped from her eyes now. Instead, she had stepped into the room that she shared with her sisters and brother for just a moment before Gretl began to pester her about what Max had written.

_"Brigitta, what was in that letter?" She had not even closed the door all the way before her youngest sister asked her that. She did not answer, instead closing the door slowly, deliberately. Through the shrinking gap, she just had a glimpse of her father retiring to his own room, the lights snuffed out; Sabina had perhaps tried to sleep already, Brigitta decided. "Brigitta?" Gretl called again, and she shoved the door forward the rest of the way, nearly slamming it._

_"What?" she asked, not turning around. If she did, then there would be more questions. Why she chewed so heavily on her lip, why her face was wet, or quite simply_ where _her letter was._

_"Will you tell us what Uncle Max had to say?" Gretl asked, eager as fourteen year-olds typically were. Did she not feel a thing any longer, not a sadness at her uncle's death, Brigitta wondered? Sometimes, when she regarded her younger sisters, especially Gretl, she thought they had no sense at all. Christopher and Eric were too young to judge so harshly, but Gretl and even Marta at times seemed to not have a thought in their heads!_

_Finally spinning about to face the interior of the room, Brigitta just breathed for a moment. Her older brother was just sitting on the edge of his bed—a rollaway cot, really—flipping through a pad of notes, the pages filled with his own cramped and disheveled writing. Whatever he had studied in college over the past year, Brigitta knew that was what he looked over. Sitting with her ankles crossed on the bed that she shared with Brigitta and Gretl, Marta was leafing carelessly through a book worn by age and twirling a lock of hair on her finger. For a moment Brigitta could not put a name to the cover, but she recognized it:_ Gone With the Wind. _Whatever Marta thought of it, she did not care for it. It was too empty a book for her at any time, and now—_

_"Brigitta!" Gretl said her name again, almost shouting it this time._

_"Don't shout," Kurt said absently. The way he squinted his eyes, holding his notes so near his face with his pencil beside his nose, it would only be a few years before he had some need of glasses._

_"Well, are you going to tell us?"_

_"There's nothing to tell," Brigitta said in a thick voice. Gretl was not as blind with her eyes as she seemed to be with her mind at times, and Brigitta looked down at the letter still clenched in her hand._

_"There must be. You're upset—"_

_"I am_ not _upset!" Brigitta snapped. She didn't even know why she felt she had to lie, but by God, she could not endure the pestering that her youngest sister would put her under if she allowed that something was amiss._

_"But your eyes are red." Marta had looked up from her book, keeping her place with a finger that she closed either half of the novel around._

_"Were you crying?"_

_"No—"_

_"And your hair is all wrong." Gretl lifted a hand to her sister's long tresses, pushing them over the older girl's shoulder. "What happened?"_

_"Nothing happened," Brigitta said again, stepping back from Gretl's touch. In another second or two, she would have slapped the girl's fingers away angrily. "I—I just got some dust in my eyes." The lie was pathetic even in her ears, and Kurt looked up from his notes, his bright eyes incredulous._

_"That's as bad as something Friedrich might say," he said, pressing the tip of his pencil to the page again, looking back down._

_Gretl laughed quietly, clapping her hands together, as though she remembered something. "Your lies used to be plausible," she said. "Friedrich's were always terrible—"_

_"Gretl, be quiet!" she snapped finally, and Gretl's face paled a bit at the sudden anger. Memories were bubbling up in Brigitta's mind, small incidents and moments that she had tucked away, almost buried, and all went back to Maria. Her eyes were tearing again, and she brushed them away with her free hand._

_"What's wrong?" Gretl asked. "Please, just tell us—"_

_"No!" How could she? Gretl would simply mope, perhaps whine a bit like the child she still was, and Marta would cry to herself. What would Kurt do? Looking to her brother, Brigitta crossed her arms on her chest, crumpling the letter even further. She wasn't certain he would even hear her through his dedication to the book of notes before him. None of them could understand, not a one!_

And so, she was just lying on the part of the bed that belonged to her, staring out the window that looked out to the evening sky over the city. For a few minutes she had escaped for a bath that had been little more than enough time to scrub the grime of the city away from her skin—keeping her letter with her while she did—but as she lay curled up, it had not been enough; no distraction could wash away her memories. So much of what she remembered from Salzburg was gone: her governess, her friends, no doubt even her home. Snaking a hand from around the sheet—anything else was too heavy in the heat of the summer night—Brigitta scrubbed at her eye.

Around her, her siblings were still awake, Marta reading beside her, Gretl sketching something in a journal, and Kurt still paging through his notes. Though still early, Brigitta had already changed to her nightgown; all she wished to do was sleep, to forget anything that had happened this evening. Her letter was still in her fist, the sweat of her palm soaking the pages, and as she closed her eyes, just wanting to have the emptiness of sleep, Brigitta wasn't sure why she held it so tightly. Her sweat would not wash away the words written there.

_Shoot her._ It had already gone through her mind more than a hundred times, but every time she heard it again, Brigitta winced. What was it Uncle Max had said, that she did not need to know anymore? _Shoot her!_ Why couldn't she open her eyes? The longer they were closed, the more she feared to see what it was he had refused to say.

_Shoot her, she's only a nun!_

Trembling again, she tightened her hold on the sheet. Not knowing was burden enough.

* * *

Despite clenching her eyelids for the entire night, Brigitta did not think she managed a moment's sleep. Each time that she believed she recognized sleep just at the edge of her consciousness, the dreams that were as vivid as her days' fantasies ever were came along, just before that blank mask of sleep. From the first reading of Max's letter, her imagination had formed almost every possible outcome, each one more terrible than the one before. If her eyes were closed for too long, Herr Zeller's voice was echoing in the room in spite of the fact that he was nowhere nearby, barking orders that nearly forced her eyes open.

_Shoot her!_ There were the words that she had drawn from his mouth, and this time, the images that filled her mind with his tones were too much to endure. Her eyes opened to the darkness, nearly overwhelming, but simply black and empty. The pages were crumbled in her fist, wet from her palm. Why did she even keep them now? Brigitta was certain that she already knew the words by heart, that she had felt every word etched into her memory with the first reading.

She turned over again, just as she had done throughout the night. Beside her, Marta and Gretl were asleep, their light breathing the only sound in the room; fortunately, beneath the window on his cot, Kurt did not snore. _What time is it?_ Brigitta thought, rubbing a hand over her eyes. She was exhausted, but still she did not think she would be able to sleep. The first signs of the dawn were breaking over the far horizon, shooting tiny rays of gold and red through the graying sky, and with a sigh, Brigitta sat up. If the morning was so near to arrival, what was the use in remaining abed?

Swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress, Brigitta stood slowly. Though she typically tied her hair back in a long braid, she had not done so the night before. All she had been able to do was to change to her nightgown, and now, the long strands of her hair were tangled into small knots that sat on her shoulders. Tugging her fingers through the bottom most of the knots, she winced a bit at the sting on her skull. On the table beside the large bed lay a comb that one of her sisters must have used before retiring last night, and she picked it up, switching it for the wet pages.

Brigitta drew the teeth of the comb through her hair again and again, hearing the strands break against the firm metal, but not noticing the pain. Just as she had been the night before, she was so cold, as though there was nothing left within her. Shivering, she looked out the window, to the sun that was just beginning to truly rise over the eastern sky, the rays shooting over and around the rows of façades and chimneys. She felt so trapped in this place, as though she would never escape from the eyes of her father, brother and sisters, and Sabina.

That was all she needed at the moment, just to be away from it all. She could not escape it all at this moment, though, for being in Salzburg was enough of a reminder of everything. Tossing the comb back to the table, Brigitta took her hair in one hand, the longest strands easily slipping through her fingers. There was no mirror in this room, and she was glad of that; would she look as weary and heavy as she felt? She as certain she did.

Twisting the length of her hair around one of those fingers, she just looked on as they slipped away, falling against her arm and around to her back another time. It was all fading, sliding out of her grip as well as those strands, as though she had never known any of what she remembered. Rubbing a hand against one of her eyes, still puffy, Brigitta sighed. Where had everything gone, everything she remembered and thought she had known? One day it had been hers and known, easily felt, and now...

If she searched everything she knew, would she discover it another time? No, she didn't know the answer. Brigitta just rubbed at her eye another time. Not knowing could not have been any worse than this. If she did not know the barest of the facts that Max had given to her, then her mind would not be creating these possibilities—

_Shoot her, damn you, Knuth!_ She shook against that thought that filled her mind as loudly as any person's voice, a voice that she could not silence.

The weight of her sleepless night was filling her bones, but Brigitta did not dare sit on the edge of the bed again, or even think of lying back down. She would hear it all again, and she would rather have her exhaustion that relive the memories that she knew were only a shadow of what must have passed.

_God damn you, I told you to shoot her!_ Brigitta clapped her hands to her ears, and a far part of her mind almost seemed to laugh. How foolish she must have appeared, a nearly grown woman pressing her hands to her ears against a sound that wasn't real! And it didn't even matter, did it? Her hands could not keep out what was born in her mind. She just sniffed, not wanting to cry another time. If she just told herself that it was the past—

Brigitta already knew that would do no good. Eight years before, she had already regretted the past, wondered if it were possible to change what was newly _in_ the past. What was done was done, but did it have to remain as it was? Sniffing again, she shook her head. This...There was no changing this.

Death was final.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

"Come on, Brigitta!" Kurt called. His sister was lagging behind the other two, just as she had been for the entirety of their walk. They had been fortunate that their father had given them permission to come out on their own, but perhaps the presence of himself and Brigitta was enough for him. Sooner or later, Kurt knew that he would have to allow them those same freedoms he had allowed to their older brother and sisters.

Or perhaps it had just been practical. He had gone to see Gunter another time before they left for America again in two days—none of them wished to sit and hear the two reminisce about Austria's past—and Sabina, still not feeling well, was in their hotel room, lying down. With Salzburg held by the Americans, what harm might come to them? Whatever the case, none of them had argued with the permission to take a walk.

"Do you think we can go to the gardens?" Gretl asked. She twirled a lock of hair around her finger.

"Of course not," Marta said. Kurt shook his head; she was turning into a girl who seemed too practical for her own good, hardly like the younger sister he remembered from years before. "They wouldn't have planted them again yet."

"That doesn't mean we can't go—"

"It doesn't make any sense—"

"But it can't be that ruined!"

"Brigitta!" Kurt said again, looking over his shoulder. He heard Gretl sighing, but didn't look back yet; at times, she behaved like the child she had been when they had first left Austria. But Brigitta, she had almost morose for the entire day, since the previous evening really.

She had stopped on the street, looking up at one of the buildings they passed, some ancient remnant that the bombs and war had spared. He nearly yelled out to her again, but the sounds of footsteps ahead of him turned his head. Marta and Gretl were running after one another, rushing on up the street without thinking of a thing. Cursing silently, he hastened his own pace. The American soldiers would surely do nothing if they found his sisters, but the thought unnerved him. He almost had to run to keep up with them, just glancing over his shoulder to Brigitta another time. But he went on ahead, looking down with every step for debris in his path; Brigitta could look after herself more than either Marta or Gretl.

"Brigitta!" he called with a quick glance over his shoulder, drawing her face. "Hurry up!" Looking back to his path, he skirted a pile of small pebbles, just hurrying after his youngest sisters with a few quiet curses under his breath.

Still along the middle of the street, Brigitta almost called out to them, wanting them to wait a moment, but Gretl was chasing after Marta, like they were playing the games of tag that had filled their childhood, and neither noticed Kurt jogging after them. She looked back over her shoulder to the cathedral rising in the background behind the walls of Nonnberg. Would they even let her near, let her in? She wasn't certain what the nuns would say, or did she even need their permission? Once or twice in the years before they had gone, Brigitta remembered going to the church cemetery with her father and siblings—and once even with her mother!—to visit the grave of a relative. Had they needed that permission? She didn't remember that they had.

And with this place being so near, the steeple with its bells rising like a man made mountain from the courtyard of the abbey, how could they just walk by? But she couldn't; she would not let herself!

Would they notice that she was gone? Brigitta wasn't certain, but at this time, she didn't truly care. They were almost at the other end of the street, Kurt throwing a word or two occasionally into Gretl and Marta's bickering, and in a moment, Brigitta darted back around the corner. What would her father say? She licked her lips, dry in the summer heat. He would surely disapprove, but did that matter?

She was alone here, the noise of her brother and sisters gone, just the pounding of blood in her ears to fill the quiet. It had seemed that they hadn't even noticed the abbey, as though the importance of it in their lives had faded when they had first crossed the border into Switzerland. She lifted a hand to the wall along the street, just wanting to touch it. Her pace was still slow, wanting to feel the rocks pass along her fingers, the rough grains slipping away beneath her fingertips. The only sound along the street was her own shoes on the pavement, the heels clicking with every step she took, and the pebbles that littered the still empty street scattering when she pushed them away from her toes.

The solid rock dipped a few feet before her, replaced by iron overhead, almost a gateway. Was that it? Trying to think back, she couldn't tell. Quickening her pace, Brigitta came to that opening, a yawning gap in the stone wall that revealed row after row of tombstones. When they had been out in the city one afternoon with Fräulein Maria, she had taken them past here as well, just looking out over the aisles of the dead. What had she said of them? That they were the righteous members of the church in Salzburg; as sisters of the abbey, they were buried within the abbey itself, deep in a courtyard filled with old stones and the silent contemplation of the sisters still living.

Did they mind her coming in? _Who? _she had to ask herself. The sisters in Nonnberg or the men and women whose abode she entered. Stepping cautiously down into the cemetery—it seemed just a courtyard, and perhaps it would be, if not for the rows and rows of stones that marked the places of the dead—Brigitta looked over her shoulder. The air was still in this place, heavier with the memories of those that rested within the masonry walls.

The patch of sky above was gray and the entire enclosure silent, as though the gloom of the war that had dissipated from the streets of Salzburg in the face of the noise of the city's people still lingered heavily between the headstones. In the rows, grass that had once been green was brown, with dead patches here and there more mud than grass. Surely it had been well-tended before, but the times had transformed things once solemn into mere chores that might be neglected. Tangled vines and creepers crawled over the stones and at the base of a few, ivy chipped away at the corners of the ancient markers.

Where was the newer section, Brigitta wondered. Surely the abbey and the cathedral had not ceased to bury those who had perished in the war, a number that must be more than any person could ear. She just glanced to the dates on the stones she passed slowly; all were standing upright, tilting with age, bearing well-worn numbers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She hastened her steps. How long until one of her siblings did turn around and notice that she was gone? Not much longer, certainly. They were not entirely careless.

These dates were later she saw, the end of the nineteenth century, the beginning of this...The ground was brown, now not with dead grass that had begun to putrefy in the summer sun but newly turned soil that had not yet sprouted forth any grass or lichen of its own. The numbers and letters on these stones, almost all of them flush with the earth and far smaller than those older stones, were clear. Fresh and new, nothing more than a name, the year of birth, and the year of death. Every date of death was clustered into the period of the war, from 1939 to 1945.

Not knowing what she was looking for, Brigitta walked along the series of markers quickly, just glancing to those dates. The later the period of the war, the more markers engraved with that year. So many had died so young, she saw. Children only a few years old, perhaps dead in bombing raid or from the poor food. How many times had they complained as sugar, spices, and their favorite sweets had vanished from the grocery store and the corner sweet shop? Brigitta tried to ignore the guilt creeping along her neck, that strange sense of being watched. Perhaps she should have employed herself during the war, she wondered, and just went faster.

She had not attempted to keep count of the number, but by now she would have no notion of the amount she had passed. Her eyes were just on the dates of the death, reading one after another until the last digit of one blurred into the first digit of another. Some were even past the end of the war, reaching into 1946—

Brigitta had to glance at one again. Near the end of this row, one stone was marked with 1938. _A mistake,_ she thought. Or perhaps she had just seen the date of birth— No, that was carved as 1915. Her mouth was dry suddenly, and in spite of the summer, the breeze was cold on her skin as if winter had descended into the tiny yard. Crouching down, she looked to the top where the name was marked with quick chisel strokes. She brushed aside a bit of soil that was atop the name, perhaps from the digging of the marker beside it.

_Maria Rainer._ The letters were swiftly done, a few scratches here and there but clearly by a hand with skill, and so new Brigitta could not deny what she saw. _Maria Rainer._ She reached out toward those letters carved so deeply in the stone, to touch them deliberately and trace their patterns, but snatched her fingers back as she came nearer. Her breaths were already choking—and the sounds of Herr Zeller's imagined words were echoing again. Did he mean to haunt her? Her ears were ringing as she stood, filling the silence that otherwise would have held his words. But she did not need to hear them; she remembered them well enough from her dreams.

Brigitta had no memory of her journey back to their rooms, of the streets she ran along, the people she passed...just the hot tears on her face. The touch of that stone beneath her fingers was etched in her mind, the words as clear in her memory as in that rock. _Maria Rainer. Maria Rainer._ The sights and sounds of the city blurred into a cloud of color and noise around her, rushing away as if she herself was standing still, pushing against a weight that did not permit her passage.

How she made it to the hotel again, she did not know, and in fact she nearly tripped on the steps of the hotel, not looking at the others around her. Did they stare at her? She didn't care, she just wanted to be away, in their hotel room, where Salzburg faded away into the background. Very nearly she left at the wrong floor, but the number smeared in her eyes was just visible enough that she found herself able to read it, just as the number on the door of their room.

Wrenching the door open, Brigitta nearly threw herself inside, not caring if another person saw her. Nothing more mattered, and all she wished to do was to cry until the pain was gone, until she had no more tears left to bleed.

* * *

In the sitting area of their rooms, it was dark when she woke, just the gentlest light of the burning embers filling the room. Those hours before, she had just collapsed onto the bench where her parents had sat only the night before, so near to where she had sat knowing nothing. Her body ached, her nose and mouth felt like they were filled with cotton, dry and scratchy, and her eyes were dry, burning with the tears that she had cried before fading asleep. Wiping away a bit of grime from her eyes, she began to sit up.

"Are you feeling better?" The voice that spoke was quiet, gentler than she ever remembered hearing. _Mother..._But no, that wasn't possible, after all, her mother had been dead for nearly fifteen years, and the memories of her were nothing more than faded photographs and small reminiscences that she scribbled in a journal years before. Yet that sense was nearly identical to what she recalled.

"Y—yes," Brigitta said, feeling for the first time the hand on her shoulder. Not her mother, not even Fräulein Maria— No, she shouldn't think of her now Brigitta knew, feeling the wetness at the corners of her eyes, though how she wasn't sure. Not Liesl, so...Sabina. "What time is it?" she managed without stammering, rubbing a hand at her nose.

"Past nine," her mother said quietly, keeping a hand on her shoulder. "You've been asleep for quite a time."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have kept you—"

"There's nothing for you to apologize for," Sabina said gently, now pushing some of Brigitta's long hair back from her face. "I just wanted to be here when you woke up."

Brigitta didn't answer, trying for a moment to swallow over the weight in her throat. Would she ask, did she even wonder. Sabina continued, "You should wash your face, darling, before you really go to bed."

"Oh." That had not been anything like what she had thought her mother would say, and it startled her. "All right." Straightening her rumpled skirt over her knees—glancing to Sabina's skirt, Brigitta could see the imprint of her profile on the dark fabric, and the even darker stains of her tears—she began to stand.

"Brigitta."

"Yes...Mother?" Still sitting, Brigitta looked to Sabina. _Curious._ In all the years, she had never noticed the resemblance she bore to her mother: both had dark hair, darker than any other person in their family, and pale faces despite the hours they ever passed in the sun.

"Please, tell me anything, darling. Anything if you wish to." Combing a hand through her daughter's longer hair, Sabina smiled in spite of the pain that she knew Brigitta felt. How many times had she heard the news of a friend's death, or of a loved one's? Smiling even as she sensed her daughter's weight on her own chest nearly brought tears to her own eyes. Perhaps a friendly face would be a single bright patch on a day that had clearly been miserable.

She wasn't certain how long she had sat with Brigitta, just feeling her daughter's face against her leg and the tears that she couldn't stop. Every now and then, the girl had shifted, her tears growing slow as if she dropped into sleep for a moment, but after a few minutes, they returned. Hours she knew, but nothing beyond that. Long enough to see her other children return, relieved to see their sister found, and for Georg to return from his meeting with Gunter, immediately concerned, but pushed aside with just a word from herself. But she would not have moved or woken Brigitta for anything at all, not when her daughter simply needed to cry. "Anything," Sabina went on, "or nothing if you want." One day it might be everything, she hoped, but it would be useless to pry.

Across from her, Brigitta just brushed aside a few tears again. How was it that she did not sense that Sabina was an intruder, poking her nose into the family? For years, that had been the way that her mother had seemed. Yet here and now, even as she stood, sniffling and feeling the tacky remnants of tears on her skin, she felt like something more, and far closer. Like a mother.

Turning her eyes up, Brigitta wanted to shout, _I don't understand!_ But her throat was too dry, and she did not want her mother's eyes on her any longer. Going to the room that she shared with her siblings—God help her if they were not asleep; she did not want to talk to them about anything, let alone what they would inquire about!—she pulled open the door and closed it behind herself just as quickly. She still couldn't look back, not yet.

It was quiet in there, just the sound of the three of them breathing. _Good,_ she thought, walking just as quickly to the bathroom on the room's side. She was already troubled enough, by this afternoon and this evening. After these years, it felt as if she had a mother again in something other than the name she spoke, as if the figure that she named _Mother_ had shape and form again. Flipping on the light in the bathroom after the pushed that door shut as well, Brigitta winced at the sight of the red and gray circles around her eyes in the mirror. Perhaps she might take her mother's advice and offer...

Her mother. It was a pleasant sound in her thoughts, one that at last had a ring of truth. Her _mother._ Leaning down over the sink in the tiny room, Brigitta turned on the tap, just a trickle of water gurgling through the ancient pipes. Filling her palm, she splashed a handful of that cool liquid over her skin. Everything had become so confusing here, when she had come hoping for and expecting clarity. As she twisted the tap closed, she wiped her hand across her cheek.

_How long will it be?_ she wondered, patting her skin dry on the edge of her sleeves, not looking to the mirror again. She just wanted to be gone, at home with her family. Her father, her brothers and sisters, and her mother.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

Beneath the sweater that she had brought, Brigitta was still cold. Even in the middle of the summer, she had brought that heavy knitted pullover, and this morning, she was quite glad she had. On the top deck of the ocean liner, the air was cold enough and the wind from the movement of the ship across the water through the still air whipped over her face, chilling her nose in particular. But it was cool enough just on the ocean without even considering the the wind.

She glanced down at the water and out over to her right, where the waves were a dull grayish blue this morning. All those years ago, had it been this way? Brigitta shook her head, reaching up to curl her hand in a fistful of her hair. Surely it had been. Here at the ship's stern, the water beneath her was white, churning up from the ship's propeller, and behind the ship, the water was choppy for several meters, a white line that lessened until at last it vanished into the chilled blue ocean again.

Twisting her fingers out of her hair, Brigitta thrust both of her hands into her pockets; most days she was out of their cabins, and her skin was beginning to show the wear of the cold and wind, cracking in the troughs between her fingers. A sudden spray of sunshine gleamed on the water, and Brigitta squinted, pulling a hand out of her pocket again to cover her eyes. Beside her feet, something fell. Glancing to it, she crouched down quickly and snatched it up: her letter from Uncle Max.

It wasn't so much that she could not bear to leave it in the cabin—every word echoed in her mind if she did not force herself to think on something else—but she could not allow someone else to see it. They needed to hear this from her, not from some letter that was written by a dead man. That man might have been Max, a friend and a man so close to their family that they had named him an uncle, but it was still only the writings of a man who could no longer speak his own words.

The letter was still tucked in the envelope, and she turned it in her hand, looking to the name that was scribbled across it. Her name. That was what this was, something written for her alone, but had Uncle Max intended that? No doubt he had meant that to be for her own judgment. It nearly made her angry, that he had left such a choice to _her_! Though she was nineteen, how could he think that she knew what to consider in such a choice?

Wrapping her hands around the railing, Brigitta just rested her chin on her knuckles. The page was curled around the rail as well, the familiar folds under her fingers. Perhaps she should have put it away, but she could not, and just wanted to hold it, to feel it. Touching that paper, it seemed she could still hold onto them. How foolish was that, she wondered, but Brigitta wasn't troubled by the silliness. It was not as if there was another person who might know just _how _silly she was.

She was so tired, just tired of Austria, of this crossing, of the memories. But they would never go away, would they? Closing her eyes, she dropped her head, sliding her forehead down against her hands. The ship dropped a bit suddenly, and in her sweater pocket, her journal slapped against her leg. She had not found the words to put to the page in that book yet, no matter how many times she had tried. Each time she brought out her pen and opened the book to a black page, her words fled, and a dozen images her mind had concocted appeared before her eyes.

Brigitta shivered, and she pushed her hand into her pocket, her fingers touching the spine. Her other hand was just as cold, and she pulled her fingers away from the rail—

Max's letter held its shape around the rail for a moment, and she reached out for it, but the wind caught one of the edges, lifting it away in a quick gust. Brigitta thrust her hand out toward it, but the paper was already dancing away in the air, just a speck on the horizon. _No,_ she thought, lowering her hand in the crisp air. _No._ Pulling her second hand back, she pushed it into her other pocket, blinking quickly.

It had only been a letter, but how could she have lost it like that? Stupidity, that was all, and she bit her tongue to keep silent words that her mother would have paled to hear. But those words should not have just scandalized her mother, but herself as well. Yet that foolishness, holding it like that...Those scribbled words had seemed like her last way to cling to the happier memories of a different time. Bringing both of her hands out, she held them up in front of her face, just blowing a quick breath of hot air on her fingers that felt nearly frozen in the snapping wind.

After a moment, she pushed them back into her pockets, hitting her journal again, and a pen that she had forgotten. Like the journal, it had been a gift from her parents, a congratulations of sorts for her acceptance to college. She had hardly written in it, though, thoughts of it pushed aside by everything that had happened. No, she had not even used it at all. She had thanked them wholeheartedly, but pushed it aside.

Drawing out the slim volume, a heavy black cover that bound creamy, unlined paper, Brigitta just looked at it for a moment. She traced a finger along the edges, only wanting to feel it. Switching it to her left hand, she fished out the pen as well. Could she ever forget? No, she decided. There was no way back, no way to lose the memories that were seared in her mind. Opening the book, the cover cracked against the unblemished pages, and she shook her head, tossing aside the long strands of hair that cut across her vision. She had no way back, but perhaps she had a way to push through the pain. After all, she had endured pain before. What she had done once, surely she could do again.

It was not the same, but the way that she had endured that pain had some lessons for this moment. Uncapping the pen, Brigitta pressed the point to the white sheet. She had not even written a date in this volume, and so in her careful script, she traced the date: _29 July, 1946._

A beginning. She wasn't certain what it was a beginning of, but it could be no worse than what she meant to leave behind.


	17. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

**Spring, 1982 **

She wore every one of her fifty-five years well, her face just marked by the faint lines of age, and the dark hair hardly brushing against her shoulders only tinged by streaks of gray. Her eyes were bright and awake, and those lines on her face around her eyes and mouth, they were not only age, but many from the smiles and laughter that still consumed her now and then.

Brigitta was not smiling now, though, standing in this graveyard. Until today, she stood in this place twice a year, once to mark her father's death, and once for Sabina's...Once for her mother. No matter how greatly she had chafed under that thought when a young girl, that Sabina would be her mother, Brigitta had finally understood the difficulty of the task her mother had taken on in marrying into the von Trapp family, seeing how her mother cared for her when she had begun to flounder under the burden of her curiosity. And she had been a wonderful mother, a wonderful wife for her father, and a beloved grandmother for her own children. Sabina had died at an early age, though, just a few years after her father's own death, as though in losing him, she had lost herself as well. Brigitta was not sure if she had wept any less for her than for her father.

This was neither the fourth of April nor the twenty-sixth of November, though, but the nineteenth of March. The journey was not a terribly long one for her, a few hours along one of the country's interstates more or less, yet she came only those two dates every year. While Sabina had still lived, Brigitta had come on her own once every year, the fourth of April. It seemed improper to be there at any other time, as if by visiting at another moment, she interrupted the quiet meditations of her parents, hidden away in their own secret space.

This day was unlike any other day that she had been in this place; its twin was a year before, in another place, another continent, just standing in the cemetery behind the abbey. The sky had been as gray as this one, threatening to wet the grass around her just as well as the one above her now. Salzburg was a place she no longer knew, almost as though she had not been there since she was a child. The short journey to that city at the very beginning of her adulthood she hardly remembered, and whenever she thought back to it, all she knew was the pain. Any other times she had returned were spent visiting with the little family who remained, the few friends who still merited that title. She always _refused_ to think about that part of the past.

But she was older, now, and everything that had created that ache was so much further from her mind and waking moments. Sometimes, it felt as though it belonged to another life that was not hers, but something that she had read in a novel when she was younger, or something she had created in one of her own. Despite what she had studied in her college years, Brigitta had gone on to be a novelist, writing in the days while her husband and older children were out of the house, and in those years when her youngest children had been at school. Thinking back to those days in Salzburg was like a history that she knew was her own, regardless of feeling it in her own memory.

No one else knew of it, what had sparked that ache; she made certain of that. Why destroy her father and mother's happiness, the love their family had felt? No, there had been no reason. What would knowledge create for them all? Only pain, and they had gone through enough of that for a lifetime. If they had put the question to her, perhaps she might have answered in earnest, but the thought had never crossed the minds of any of her siblings, and especially not the youngest; Christopher, Eric, and Lana, the last born six or seventh months after they had returned from that horrible visit, had no knowledge of Austria, no memories of her, and no care for what had happened in that place so many years before their time. Their happiness was untouched by all of it.

Brigitta had never returned to that place, save for this day the year before, on the nineteenth of March, 1981. On several trips, she had stood in Salzburg, trying to remember the paths of her childhood...but the abbey cemetery, no. It had taken more courage than she had possessed in those moments, harder nerves than ran in herself. It would still be there the _next_ time, she had always told herself; after perhaps thirty-five years from the moment it was set upright in the soil, the stone was there, the inscription weathering the rain, storms, and snows of the Austrian climate, but every word still visible.

The stone had been rough beneath her fingers, feeling every bit the age it had attained, and the letters had emerged clearly on the paper over which she scraped her charcoal. Holding that page in this moment, it was as dry and cold as that day. How silly she must appear to any person who might walk by, she thought vaguely, a grown woman just standing in a graveyard, clutching a blackened piece of paper in one hand, and a few dark, flat stones in her other, stones as cold as the paper. Even her daughter must think something strange of her.

Any of her children would have come with her had she asked, Brigitta knew, but somehow, it was better that she stood in this place with Rachel, her second daughter. Somehow, her spirit seemed to have come out in Rachel. An intelligent young woman just in her early thirties, Rachel's eyes were a bright blue, her hair a light shade tinted by red that she wore longer than the woman she resembled, her own touching her shoulders, occasionally brushing over to the top of her back. But her soul seemed directly drawn from Maria's.

Brigitta rarely even thought that name, and she had never spoken it in all those days since she had seen the stone for the first time in Salzburg, but whenever she truly considered her daughter, it was impossible to sever that connection. Though the faith that had been in Maria was not in Rachel—the girl had been born in the 1950s, and in her college years ?xt=urn:btih:e1af5f59f021775254627ec1d9a861695dc20b0e&dn=Aladdin+%282019%29+%5BBLURay%5D+%5B1080p%5D+English&tr=udp%3A%2F% %3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F% .com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F% .com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F% .tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F% .com%3A6969had discovered a swath of new ideas that widened her mind and world even as it saddened her parents and grandparents—but the same love of music and song filled her.

Rachel was not standing beside her, but she had driven, and now waited by their car, nearby but still out of earshot unless Brigitta shouted. True, she had offered to come along, but Brigitta had asked her to remain behind. For this moment, she needed to be here with just her mother and father, and Maria, as near as she could be. Glancing to the gray clouds swirling above, she could already seen the rain ready to break free. However much her daughter was willing to endure her caprices, Rachel would believe something strange if she stood in the rain, just staring down at a grave marker and holding tight to a smudged paper and small stones. They all meant little to nothing to her, or maybe it seemed so because of how large they loomed in Brigitta's mind. Rachel had loved them both, but as grandparents—the only way that she could. Loving them as a child loved a parent was impossible, and of course she never knew Fräulein Maria.

Bending down, Brigitta just laid her paper out on the edge of the tombstone's flat surface that surrounded the headstone, the ring of stone rising a couple inches above the grass that filled the emptiness between the stones. Row after row stretched on in every direction, the realm of the dead where one day, they would all rest, finding companionship with those they had once loved. _Still _loved_._ Rolling the stones between her fingers, she placed one on each corner, sliding them to the very edges. Crouching there, she looked back to the inscription carved in the rock.

"She forgave us, Father," Brigitta whispered, tracing her finger over the words engraved on the stone before her. _Georg Ritter von Trapp, Sabina Angeline von Trapp._ The years that dated their deaths were too near one another, and for Lana, their deaths when she was just coming into adulthood had been almost too much. But perhaps it had been better that way for the two of them, as though fate had chosen not to force her mother to endure the years of loneliness that a life as a widow meant. In spite of that, and how well she had loved her mother, Brigitta could not think about Sabina at this moment, even here. "I know she did. For everything." Would have even been right to ask her to leave the abbey and the life she had chosen? Brigitta didn't know, and she doubted that she could even form that question in prayer, as though it was a question God himself meant to remain unanswered.

And would Maria have wished for them to know what had befallen her? No, Brigitta couldn't believe she would have wished that upon anyone. Whatever she did, whatever happened to her—their beloved _Fr__ä__ulein Maria_—there was no pain for any of them but the ache of memory, the longing to see her again. It was not the desperate misery of death and loss, rather the unhappiness of absence. And there was no reason any of her siblings should know of their governess's fate unless they came to this place sometime soon, for why would they ask her of what had come to Maria otherwise? All of them still loved and remembered her, but they rarely spoke of her, like she was a ghost in their memories, who had melted into the wind. _Where ignorance is bliss..._

A first drop of water fell out of that hazy sky, splattering on the black-gray stone in front of her. "Mom!" Rachel called, and Brigitta looked back. Her daughter's pale hair was almost beginning to rise with the humidity that she suddenly felt, and she looked up. The clouds had thickened, and another few drops of rain slapped the grass beside her. As much as she just wished she could stay here beside her parents, beside the three of them, she had to leave. Rising slowly, and shaking a few folds from her skirt, Brigitta turned away from that stone, swallowing hard as she did. But she wasn't really leaving them, was she? She would be back again soon, on the fourth of April, again on twenty-sixth of November.

And the next nineteenth of March, to begin her yearly visits anew.

On her glasses, a droplet of rain spread out, and Brigitta took a few steps slowly, then quickened her pace, not wanting to be caught in the rain. _Soon,_ she thought, the possibilities consuming her as she opened the passenger door of the car and ducked inside. _Don't worry. I'll be back very soon._

The page was already wet, the dark stone beneath gleaming through the transparent fibers. Where charcoal covered the page that had been creamy white, the water smeared the words that had made their impression until it appeared identical to the first rubbing taken of that stone in Salzburg: illegible, incomprehensible, a mystery that would never be uncovered. On the stones weighing the paper down, the droplets gathered, growing into puddles that clung to the surface for a few moments before breaking apart and sliding down each side to either soak the page further or coat the tombstone. Though the white spaces between the charcoal marks mixed together, now gray, the words that Max Detweiler had commissioned were still visible to the empty field like they were in the empty graveyard of Nonnberg Abbey, as if the places were somehow together for this time, just for a moment.

_In loving memory of Maria Rainer, Beloved of God and friend of man_  
_Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends._

* * *

**A/N:** And that's that! I get the impression that this story has made some people quite sad, as I remember from the first time I posted it; personally, I enjoyed writing it very much. _The Sound of Music_ lends itself to some toothachingly sweet fanfictions, so I think it's good to really change that dynamic, for there to be unhappiness and loss whilst attempting to stay in character. We don't always get the _happily ever after_ we know we want, but we might find a different one when we're not really looking for it. And that doesn't mean it's better or worse...it's just different.


End file.
